PDF format. Articles
Articles from the first issue of Voluntary Action
Winter 1998 (Volume 1 Number 1)
Making a difference: Can governments influence volunteering?
Dr Justin Davis Smith, Director, Institute for Volunteering Research
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This review of government’s most recent attempts to promote volunteering describes the initiatives of the Thatcher and Major administrations leading up to the ‘integrated approach’ of the Make a Difference campaign. The findings of various evaluations of this campaign are then summarised: the telephone helpline and the national media campaign were adjudged failures, but the network of Local Volunteering Development Agencies was thought to have made a promising start at creating a local infrastructure for volunteering, though its impact was blunted by inadequate funding and a lack of strategic thinking. What governments have so far failed to do is to translate national policies into workable solutions at the local level, solutions that take account of local variations in volunteering.
Volunteering for employability
Pat Gay, Institute for Volunteering Research
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This analysis of the role volunteering can play in improving the job prospects of unemployed people is based on a 1998 study (an update of the pioneering 1982 report on the subject). A growing proportion of people are volunteering explicitly to increase their employability, and often succeed in acquiring the skills and the self-confidence they need to find paid work. Volunteer managers think that this is because voluntary organisations can give their volunteers experiences similar to those encountered in paid work, such as recruitment, training, on-the-job experience, support. But if this link between volunteering and employment is to be strengthened, voluntary organisations need more funding, jobseekers need more information, and Jobcentre and Benefits Office advisers need to understand how volunteering can help employability.
Volunteers in the Guide Association: Problems and solutions
Geoff Nichols, Leisure Management Unit, Sheffield University
Lindsay King, Sport and Recreation Division, University of Northumbria at Newcastle
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An examination of the difficulties experienced by the Guide Association in recruiting and retaining volunteer leaders, chief among them being the lack of other volunteers to share the workload, the shortage of time left after paid work and family commitments, and the increasing demand for specialist skills. The article considers the extent to which the problems are likely to be common to the rest of the voluntary sector and discusses the various responses the Guide Association has made; these include piloting local teams that will shoulder some of the District Commissioner’s workload, setting up a marketing and external relations department, creating local networks of specialised volunteers and establishing a volunteers database. Although the research was commissioned by the Guide Association to inform its policy development, the interpretation of results and policy suggestions are those of the researchers.
Vanishing volunteers:
Are young people losing interest in volunteering?
Katharine Gaskin, Independent Research Consultant
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A report on an investigation into why young people aged 16 to 24 are losing interest in volunteering: their level of involvement is down 12 points since 1991. Although young people are aware of the potential benefits of volunteering – for example, how it can broaden their experience and teach them new skills – they feel it has an ‘image problem’. They also encounter major barriers to involvement, including lack of time, lack of information and lack of ‘gatekeepers’. A solution is proposed in the form of the acronym FLEXIVOL: Flexibility, Legitimacy, Ease of access, Xperience, Incentives, Variety, Organisation and Laughs. Instead of attempting to make young people fit into existing volunteering, we should reshape volunteering to accommodate them.
Comparative studies of volunteering:
What is being studied?
Mark Lyons, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
Philip Wijkstrom, School of Economics, Stockholm, Sweden
Gil Clary, College of St Catherine, St Paul, USA
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An important component of comparative third sector research is devoted to volunteering. At its most basic, this research seeks to identify and explain differences in levels of volunteering in different countries. Sometimes the research draws on data collected in country-specific studies; sometimes researchers use the same survey instrument across several countries. A fundamental question that does not seem to have been asked, let alone answered, is just what is volunteering and what should the surveys be trying to measure? Attempts to answer this question immediately become entangled in the two alternative paradigms into which research into the third sector is divided: one which draws on economics and law and focuses on non-profit organisations, particularly charities; and one which draws on sociology and politics and is more interested in voluntary or mutual associations and civil society. This paper reviews a number of studies to illustrate different approaches to, and the difficulty of, conceptualising and thus measuring volunteering. It considers whether a single approach that meets the needs of researchers in both paradigms is possible.
