To pay or not to pay, that is the question

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.