Should voluntary work be rationed?

[rue_d_etropal]

I have been involved on and off in voluntary work since school. In fact i am proud to have been part of some voluntary groups. My old school actually pionerred some of the early work on getting school age students doing voluntary work, and one of the first volunteer bureaus was set up whilst I was at school.
Everything worked OK, there never appeare to be more time spent raising money than doing what we were meant to be doing. Granted the area was reasonably wealthy , but we only had one sponsored walk a year.
Even when I was involved in practical conservation work later on, we just got on and did the job. Rarely any problems, until there was an expansion in operations and we has paid staff involved, who grumbled the office was not suitable. It was good enough for us, and we were one of the main practical conservation outfits in UK, and we were doing a lot of work, all unpaid.
I think the rot in voluntary work started whe someone in government suggested the unemployed should be doing voluntary work, only to be told the unemployment office would not allow them to do so. Doors opened and the unemployment offices too an interst in voluntary work, as if it was their idea and baby.
On returning to voluntary/community work 10 years ago, I found much of thoe organisation, which had built up from the volunterr bureau, lokked like a department of local council, and there were similar attitudes towards money, expenses and training.
And then i got involve in a project I liked, There had been a suggestion of a paid job, but the grant money was not secured, so I offered to continue as a volunteer, only to be told I could only do a certain amount. The excuse was that some one might think I was being exploited, absolutely crazy. Unfortunately I lost control, got upset and was asked to leave.
The latest project I have been involved, has some paid staff, but is mainly volunteers. From day 1 of the project going live, I felt uncomfotable, and decided I would partly leave to do my own thing, but someone else was getting upset. It sounded very much deja vu, and eventually we all had a meeting and one action has been to restrict number of hours volunteers can do. I find this so negative, and counterproductive. Should volunteering be rationed?

If anyone watched thatr Mary Portas series where she helped a charity shop, then you will start to understand some of the negative things that can happen, if to don't fully understand what voluntary work is all about. It seems that making money is more important than the people to give their time free.
I am concerned that with the government trying to get more communities running things, then all that will happen is a replacement of paid council staff running things with unpaid pseudo council volunteers running things.
Voluntary work is much more than completing a task, it is taking part, and I think it is (or has been) taken over by form filling, pen pushing bureaucrats.

[madibe]

What a brilliant, interesting post Rue.

My Dad, who is now on his own, has recently started using some of the services provided by age uk and their volunteers. He is a happy man (which makes me happy). They have been brilliant, helping out with odd jobs and gardening etc, which makes his life richer.

If it was not for people like you and others in the sector we would indeed be a poorer state. Thank you for your personal efforts.

I agree from my limited experience that once the big wheels enter this area the ground rules change. I guess there is volunteer work and volunteer work eh?

Don't know about it being 'rationed' - I think that you do what you want to do.... but perhaps when the councils and government get involved their people should follow the lessons learned by the original organisation and not the other way around.

Is that what you think?

Cheers, Maudibe

[Snail]

When i became unemployed, i volunteered to work in a charity shop selling 2nd hand furniture, only to be asked for 2 character references and their contact details. I must be old fashioned, but this seemed wrong to me. Being prepared to work for free isn't good enough anymore, whatever happened to trust. Decided not to bother in the end.

The problem with volunteering is too many people are exploiting it for selfish reasons. Many volunteers now see it as something to put on their CV and as a way of boosting career prospects. While others see it as a free labour source.

Very sad, its becoming more and more about taking, rather than giving.

[GlynG]

I don't think it should be banned. Fecking bureaucracy.

A friend volunteered with a mental health charity, after leaving an institution himself and he ended up getting a good paid job and eventually a management position.

[biffvernon]

Over the last couple of centuries there has been a steady moneterising of the domestic economy, more and more goods and services being paid for rather than being exchanged in non-monetary arrangements. The 'voluntary sector' is now subject to the same moneterising tendency. After the post-peak-oil climacteric we should expect a return to a society where more goods and services are provided out with the cash economy. This is a central theme to David Fleming's book Lean Logic

[Oxenstierna]

Interesting question.

These days we hear a lot about interns those unpaid graduates or university students desperate for a bit of work experience.

I honestly never heard of this term in the workplace until a few years ago. That said, having worked in a place that does accept interns I can say that it is not all exploitation. Some of them are pretty bloody useless and more trouble than they're worth.

Personally, I'm all for volunteering and the gift economy - the problem is that like so many things in our day and age, volunteering has been commercialised and bureaucratised. I'd prefer to see people volunteering at a grassroots level, doing stuff for their local communities and neighbours rather than big corporate charities that are more or less run like businesses.

Of course, it won't look so good on the CV, potentially, but my personal admittedly somewhat purist understanding of volunteering is that it is work freely undertaken by people during any 'surplus value' time that they may have.

[Ludwig]

When i became unemployed, i volunteered to work in a charity shop selling 2nd hand furniture, only to be asked for 2 character references and their contact details. I must be old fashioned, but this seemed wrong to me. Being prepared to work for free isn't good enough anymore, whatever happened to trust. Decided not to bother in the end.

The problem with volunteering is too many people are exploiting it for selfish reasons. Many volunteers now see it as something to put on their CV and as a way of boosting career prospects. While others see it as a free labour source.

Very sad, its becoming more and more about taking, rather than giving.

Yeah, I had the same experience recently. Applying for voluntary work is as time-consuming as applying for jobs, and in many cases you're no more likely to get the work.

I did voluntary work in the late 80s. Back then, you had an interview and they either took you on or they didn't. You applied one week, you started the next - not wait a month for them to sort out references (by which time you might well have got a job anyway).

I don't blame the charities; unfortunately they have to cover themselves against dishonesty, because the default attitude of many people in society today is "don't help a stranger unless there's something in it for you".

[emordnilap]

Maybe rationing is or isn't a good idea, I don't know.

However I would support those who volunteer who (like rue) are vocal and practical in pointing out what it's supposed to be about. Though rue is talking about volunteering generally, you can easily assess the measure of this in any charity - or pseudo-charity - shop.

There again, I am, I suppose, a professional charity shopper...

[rue_d_etropal]

Trust is important, and for some reason everything seems to assume you have to prove you can be trusted. A bit like being presumed guilty , rather than innocent. I think the attitudes within some organisations who use volunteers is actually immoral. Asking for references is just rubbing people's notes in the s__t.
Many of those who want to volunteer are outside the loop, so will have trouble finding references. I tried to explain this to my group, and they just could not understand. Mind you most of them either worked for council(or similar) or had done so in the past, and I don't think they could think outside a very narrow corridor. For me coming back into voluntary work, I find this attitude both upsetting and worrying, as it is destroying the system from inside.
Another side of volunteering, is the perception of it being for do-gooders, and this view can put people off. I used to find voluntary work a lot of fun, especially when it was fo conservation organisation. It was my social life, and probably more fun than my interesting paid job in IT. I didn't get expences, in fact I paid for the privaledge of volunteering. Getting to work sites at my own expence, paying a contribution towards cost of food etc, and it worked extremely well. Really think something has gone wrong over past 20-30 years, and no-one seems to have noticed.
One final worrying bit of info. On the project I was on 5 years ago(the one which upset me in the end), one of the team(?) running the project went on some typre of workshop/course and the person running the workshop talked about how difficult it was managing volunteers. Now that type of negative attitude is totally wrong, and imoral. Also sounds typical of what pen pushing, form filling bureaucrats say, and should be kept as far away from the voluntary sector as possible.