Articles

16th issue of Voluntary Action - Volume 6 Number 1

 

Sentimental jamboree: an exploratory study of volunteer activities at a farmers’ market
Louis Crust, College of Urban and Public Affairs,
University of New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

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Volunteer activity makes an important contribution to community life in the United States. Earlier studies have attempted to explain volunteering by focusing primarily on the attributes of individual volunteers or on social resources. This article represents a departure from those studies. It addresses the social and economic context in which the volunteer activity takes place in order to identify causal factors relating to volunteer attitudes and behaviours. Based on interviews and participant-observation research conducted at a farmers’ market near the heart of a major US city, it uses the theory of political economy and the concept of alienation in its analysis. It is directed towards learning what type of person volunteers; their motivations; their interactions with other volunteers; and what they gain from volunteer work. In addition to discussing the causes of volunteer activity, this article addresses the study’s implications for policy and practice in the voluntary sector. It contains findings that support the promotion of similar markets or enterprises in cities, as well as findings that suggest strategies for the recruitment and retention of volunteers.

Recruiting volunteers for political action: the case of a welfare reform coalition
Megan Meyer, School of Social Work, University of Maryland

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This article examines the methods used to mobilise hundreds of volunteers into a coalition that successfully influenced the implementation of welfare reform in the USA during the mid-1990s. The coalition’s organisers used seven well-known interpersonal techniques to recruit and enhance the commitment of volunteers, and ultimately to get them to think and act collectively. This article considers the strengths, limitations and risks of each technique and identifies the context within which each is most effective – thus showing that these techniques, when used selectively, are an important part of the ‘skill set’ organisers need to stimulate collective political action by volunteers.

Volunteering: social glue for community cohesion?
Professor James R Kearney OBE, Centre for Voluntary Action Studies,University of Ulster

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This article examines the impact of volunteering on community cohesion and, drawing from research, discusses four key contributions. It addresses the question of how the full potential of volunteering can be realised to enable it to play the role – sometimes a central role – ascribed to it by government in achieving the policy goal of community cohesion and other, related goals such as civic renewal, active citizenship, building social capital and reducing social exclusion.

The article raises a number of implications for policy, practice and research that need to be addressed if volunteering is to be made more inclusive for all. It concludes by discussing two emerging issues in debates on current volunteering policy. The first relates to rewards for volunteering beyond the reimbursement of expenses – as, for example, in the Young Volunteers Challenge Pilot in England. The second relates to policy on the promotion of volunteering and whether the current balance and links between formal and informal volunteering need to be reconsidered.

The special position of volunteers in the formation of social capital
Jenny Onyx, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
Rosemary Leonard and Helen Hayward-Brown, University of Western Sydney, Australia

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This article examines the special role of volunteers in the formation of social capital. While there is a growing recognition that volunteering is important and does contribute to social capital, there is very little understanding of the micro-processes involved. A qualitative study of volunteers and their clients examines these processes. The argument of the article is fourfold. Firstly, that volunteers play a key role as community builders by creating new organisations and services. Secondly, that volunteers play a key role in developing bonding, intra-community links.

Thirdly, that volunteers play a mediating role in community networks, particularly between professional and lay networks. Fourthly, that, given their key location in community networks, they also play a key role in developing bridging links with other organisations and communities of interest. Given this key position, they may be instrumental in creating, or alternatively obstructing, broader community networks. That is, they play a potential bridge-builder or gatekeeper role in network building – a role that may facilitate or impede inclusiveness.

How including volunteers changes a financial statement: the Expanded Value Added Statement
Laurie Mook, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Betty Jane Richmond and Jack Quarter, York University, Toronto, Canada

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This study shows how the inclusion of volunteers in a Value Added Statement tells a very different story from a Value Added Statement based on audited financial information only. This modified statement is referred to as an Expanded Value Added Statement (Quarter, Mook, and Richmond, 2003). It includes an imputed value for volunteer hours and a valuation of the social benefits experienced by volunteers. Like the conventional Value Added Statement, it distributes value added to a group of stakeholders, but it includes volunteers as one of those stakeholders. To illustrate this model, research on the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, Ontario Region, is used. The research shows that volunteers contributed 40 per cent of the value added produced by this organisation.