It is said that we are at the dawn of a great, new age of
Volunteerism in America. In the last couple of years, there has been any number of articles written about
citizen innovators and volunteers engaging in grassroots-level social
innovation initiatives—in areas ranging from public school education and disaster recovery
to environment and green energy.
Two distinct sets (or generations) of volunteers have
emerged: the first set includes members of the baby boomer generation who have
retired recently and are looking for “meaningful civic engagement roles”; the second
set includes young adults of the (Obama-inspired?) Millennium generation who increasingly
consider volunteering for nonprofits as a way of life.
There is no better indicator of this volunteer fever in America than
the number of young graduates from top universities who regularly sign up with the Teach for America (TFR) program. TFR is a nonprofit organization that recruits and places fresh
graduates in challenging urban and rural teaching jobs throughout the country. Strictly
speaking it is not a volunteer task – participants in TFR (called ‘corps
members’) do get paid an annual salary, typically around $35,000. However,
given that most of these graduates from top-tier universities could have
pursued much more remunerative job opportunities elsewhere, it is as good as
volunteerism. The program has become so successful that for the 2009 academic
year the acceptance rate for new recruits is close to 15% (lower than that of
most top-tier Wall Street firms!).
While these and other examples lend proof to the large
influx of potential volunteers showing up at the doorsteps of the nation’s numerous
nonprofit organizations, the critical question remains: How well prepared are
the nonprofit organizations to engage with all these volunteers? Or, do the
nonprofits have the ability to tap into and channel the creativity and
expertise of this emerging volunteer workforce, to solve key social problems?
Based on my own ongoing research on social innovation, the
answer, unfortunately, is No.
Nonprofit organizations’ challenge of involving citizen volunteers
in social innovation initiatives is not much unlike that of business organizations
in partnering with customers in innovation and value creation. Customers act largely
as volunteer innovators in the private sector; most often, they do not derive
any monetary gains from their activities. As research shows, companies that are
successful in engaging their customers in innovation activities are those that create
“valuable experiences” for customer innovators and bring a lot of clarity and
transparency to the innovation process. These and other lessons from the
private sector imply three key issues for consideration for nonprofits
confronted with the ‘volunteer challenge’:
- Does
the nonprofit organization have a strategic
approach towards engaging volunteers in its activities? (Identifying
the organization’s expertise/skill gap, mapping out the roles that the
volunteers will play to fill those gaps; etc.)
Teach for America is a good example of a nonprofit that has been successful in addressing all of
the above three issues. Hopefully, other nonprofit organizations can learn from
TFR and prepare themselves to leverage the coming wave of volunteers.
If they do, then we will likely see a revolution in social
innovation—one that is truly grassroots-driven and with enduring social impact!
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