The Effective Use of Volunteers: Best Practices for the Public Sector

Several myths surround the involvement of volunteers in public and nonprofit organizations in the delivery of services. Perhaps the most common are that volunteers are “free” or impose no monetary costs on the host organization, and that they can “save” agencies teetering on the edge of financial ruin. Nearly as common is the assertion that volunteers cannot be “fired” or, in more extreme form, cannot be managed. Other myths include beliefs that volunteers will perform any job task, and that they are readily available to all organizations that want them. Volunteer programs have the lamentable drawback, however, that they engender adversarial relationships with paid staff. Like most myths, those pertaining to volunteer involvement contain a grain of truth. Programs that have not been designed carefully are likely to fall prey to the identified maladies and worse. Alternatively, in programs that have been structured carefully, volunteer participation can help agencies realize the benefits and avoid the pitfalls of using volunteers. The most successful programs implement mechanisms and procedures to administer the volunteer effort and manage its novel human resources effectively.