A note in response to this blog
Daniela Papi, founder of PEPY writes about the need for volunteers to make meaningful contributions to the projects they join. If a volunteer does not provide an unfulfilled skill set then a financial contribution ought to be offered.
YSP strongly supports the notion that contributions must be meaningful, but with regards payment for placements I believe this should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Ideally I would like to ensure every volunteer donated a 'decent' amount of money to their host project, but so many are put off with the idea of paying to volunteer when this is not the case for volunteering at home. Perhaps the duty should be for the connecting organisation to donate part of their revenue rather than the volunteer? This is something we must consider with YourSafePlanet.
I deliver a keynote speech this Thursday on social enterprise for the Annual Conference of the Specialist Schools and Academies trust. I will argue that social enterprises and NGOs/charities alike must be run as businesses in order to achieve their goals. Relying on grants or donations removes long term sustainability which is vital for long term positive impacts.
The question here, therefore, is whether an organisation can ever sustain projects by providing a steady inflow of volunteers with cash donations. My feeling is that they might do better donating a proportion of their own revenue and delivering volunteers when requested. But then do we run the risk of recreating profit-making volunteer companies?!
I think I’m returning to my original argument - although more time-consuming a case-by-case basis is the most reliable.
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This is an interesting debate and I have actually also responded on Daniela Papi's blogsite on this issue.
Having hosted both donating volunteers as well as non-donating volunteers, both in Nepal and in Ghana, I am very opinionated in this connection.
I have always found that every time you have a donating volunteer programme, the chances that the project is only accepting the volunteer for the money is very high.. This means that the whole process of placement and the volunteer coming in becomes farcical as he/she is only tolerated as an income source.
Volunteering has always been about service, and should remain about service, two pairs of hands, two pairs of legs and a brain. Nothing else.
All organisations, NGO's alike should only be paid for services rendered. If these are rendered as part of the volunteering, like hosting the volunteer, taking out trips, then the money has to be given for that, but no dole outs.
Anything else, any sort of financial contribution has to follow a due process, that the organisation would face in the real world... proposals, banging doors etc... so that getting the money requires more effort than just accepting a volunteer, otherwise it becomes free money, and free money has no ownership and is spent freely.
Having said that, volunteers tend to be a grape vine where funding can come from, but this needs to be carefully managed, so that the interests of a few are not fueled in the communities, and that the processes are transparent and are not destroying the delicate balance in the societies that we are trying to benefit.
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