The Nonprofit Fix
"The Nonprofit Fix" is a candid and insightful podcast that explores the challenges of the nonprofit sector and its potential to repair our broken world. Join hosts Pete York and Ken Berger, as they delve into the sector's issues, discussing solutions to foster a more effective and impactful nonprofit community.
Opinions expressed in this podcast are personal and not reflective of the hosts' employers.
The Nonprofit Fix
Unlocking the True Worth of Volunteers: Rethinking Nonprofit Resource and Impact Strategies
Discover the unsung heroes behind the missions we champion and the staggering economic impact they wield – our show is a tribute to the power of volunteerism in the nonprofit sector. Join us, Ken Berger and Peter York, as we unravel the complexities of managing a volunteer workforce and the visible and hidden investments necessary for cultivating a thriving volunteer program. We confront the damaging "nonprofit starvation cycle," challenge misconceptions about overhead, and reveal how strategic volunteer management can propel nonprofit agendas forward.
This episode is a profound exploration of the intricate dance between reliance on volunteer labor and its effects on wage equity, program outcomes, and resource distribution. We delve into the challenges nonprofits face in engaging volunteers, particularly from communities of color, and discuss the delicate balance required in the roles of board members volunteering. Our conversation is enriched with data-driven insights, as we advocate for a reformed approach to volunteer reporting that could reshape accounting practices in the nonprofit landscape, offering a beacon of hope for a more equitable future.
Finally, we spotlight nonprofit organizations that play a key role in connecting volunteers with nonprofits seeking specialized skill sets, emphasizing the mutual benefits of such partnerships. This episode is an essential listen for those looking to understand the full spectrum of volunteerism's impact and how to harness its potential. Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion that promises to leave you with a new appreciation for the volunteer force that fuels the nonprofit world.
Welcome to the Nonprofit Fix a podcast about the nonprofit sector where we talk openly and honestly about the many challenges that face the sector where we will discuss current and future solutions to those challenges where we explore how the nonprofit sector can have much more positive impact in the world. A podcast where we explore how the nonprofit sector can have much more positive impact in the world.
Speaker 2:A podcast where we believe that once we fix the nonprofit sector, we can much more dramatically help to fix our broken world.
Speaker 1:Hello again everyone. Ken Berger here with my colleague, tech wizard, friend and podcast co-host, peter York. Hello everybody, how are you? I don't think they're going to be able to respond to that, peter, but we will move on anyway. Before we get into the meat of today's episode, a quick bit of housekeeping. The Nonprofit Fix is now an actual nonprofit itself. It took about two hours to make it happen. To give you an idea of how easy it is for anybody to start a nonprofit, we also have built the beginnings of a website and you can check it out. It's very rudimentary, but it's. Nonprofitfixorg is the website location, and more will be added to that and more to come in future episodes.
Speaker 1:Focus of today's episode Although we intersperse other topics on occasion in between, we are also determined to complete our walkthrough of summarizing the challenges we face in the nonprofit sector that we refer to as the exhausted sector. So welcome to episode 11, which is the fourth episode under that theme. And, for those of you who are keeping track, we have covered the subject in episodes 7, 8, and 10. And now, of course, this fourth episode, number 11. So let's move on to this area, this next area of challenge, and that is volunteers, and I'm going to pass it over to Peter Kick it off.
Speaker 2:Thank you, ken. So on this episode we're going to talk about a really important and big topic within the nonprofit sector, which is the whole world of volunteerism. If you think back to the origins of the sector and it's even sometimes called the volunteer or voluntary sector the idea of the charitable sector, all of its roots and all of our roots really are grounded in a central part of the business model, if you will, which is the engagement, management, active participation of volunteers. So many nonprofit organizations depend upon volunteers to deliver services, to deliver programs, to actually support them from a capacity standpoint. Of course, our boards, the nonprofit boards, are volunteer within the nonprofit sector, boards are volunteer within the nonprofit sector. But really, when we have that lens, when we're asking the question about why and what is special about the nonprofit sector and what are the unique features, is this whole notion of volunteers and let's start off by just acknowledging that, when it comes down to it, the whole space of volunteerism is something that, within the nonprofit sector, is truly a benefit and an add-on and an important part of the model and tool.
Speaker 2:I'll give you a little bit of a number. So there's an organization called the independent sector which every year they come out with a number. That is the value of volunteerism. It's the dollar per hour that is important to kind of take note of, nonprofits to take note of when they think about engaging volunteers and how much when they're trying to calculate the benefit, if you will. And the real importance of that particular number is to start to quantify something we don't typically quantify in our sector. In fact, there's some implications we're going to talk about later on this episode with respect to not quantifying the value of volunteers more formally as a part of our accounting, if you will, in the sector. But I just want to throw out a number to you based on what we call the value of volunteerism, and let's say, right now, it's over $30 an hour. Now the independent sector number is.
Speaker 2:We can quibble on whether you agree with that or not. Considering the minimum wage is nowhere near that level, but I just want to throw out a number, and that is that the value of volunteer time is immense. In 2018, they estimated that if you looked at all the volunteers most of which are volunteering within nonprofit sector $203.4 billion in the value of volunteerism was spent in 2018. So volunteerism is something that's a part of our ethos. It's a part of our kind of US. You know what we do and it's a part of the sector. It's a central part of the sector. Ken Berger, you had a. You were going to say something. You're muted.
Speaker 1:It's interesting that they've calculated this at the level of $30-some-odd an hour, because I know that's for 2024.
Speaker 1:I hear you, you know sort of the lifeblood of many of our organizations out there paraprofessionals and whatnot, who are trained and have experience probably above and beyond those of a typical volunteer.
Speaker 1:They make typically, let's say, $18 to maybe at the maximum, when they start out, $25 an hour, and it's only somebody that's been a paraprofessional for a number of years before they would conceivably ever get to a $30 an hour rate. So I have to say that I find it a little. I'd like to really at some point. Maybe we could just take a look at how they calculate that, because I suspect it's being generous or the other side of it is. I mean, I guess the other way you could look at it is what the real value is of those paraprofessionals and direct service professionals is far more than what they get paid. Or perhaps the other way to shake it is if you add their benefits and all the rest of it, then it gets a little over 30 bucks. But I still think it's an interesting contrast with the bulk of the people who I think work in many parts of the sector.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's the benefits piece. I do think also, when they're calculating this, what I can tell you is they use data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics focusing on hourly earnings of non-farm private workers. It's adjusted. I do think also, you have to remember that there's a possibility they're looking at this through many lenses If you put bone, if you put board members into the mix, perhaps some of them in terms of what they might charge for for their expertise if they were, you know, for example, you know somebody on your board who's doing your finances or is playing an important financial role or some other role. So I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:And there's a whole lot of other things that go in there. But, and I do think that it's in part, let's be really clear. I think it's in part to encourage volunteerism, but let's just say, hypothetically, it's not $30 an hour. Let's say we even give it the minimum wage. I just want to say, for the record, that still means it's in 2018, we would have been at, you know, a hundred billion dollars in, in, in, uh, resources that are being put for good into the sector. So we can debate, and I think it's an interesting debate point, but when it comes down to it. We do have to, you know, we have to try to figure out some kind of value so we can understand more about it. We don't do that enough.
Speaker 1:Yes, so just one last point on this and this is something that I think you are truly an expert on and I know you feel passionate about, which is what I would refer to as the sin of averages, and I think the point that you've made in other instances probably applies here, and I think you've already indicated that which is that, based on the type of organization and the size of the organization, you know it might, you know, someday perhaps we'll be able to say, for an organization of this size and this cause, the reliance on direct service volunteers, the reliance on board members, the amount of time that's spent varies, and so that average would be more nuanced. But I get your point. I mean, it's a starting point at least, and it definitely indicates that there's a tremendous amount of value in the work of the volunteers.
Speaker 2:So I'll stop there Exactly exactly, and I do think it's a worthwhile data point. I don't know enough and I'd have to do a little bit more digging as to how they get that calculation. Should have done that actually beforehand. But at the end of the day, the important point is there are billions of dollars, tens of billions, maybe hundreds of billions of dollars that are donated in time to nonprofits. The benefits of all of these volunteers is truly multifold.
Speaker 2:Organizations are capable of increasing their capacity to deliver services and achieve their mission. There are entire programs. We all know about that. Almost at least a large majority of their program budget is actually not their program budget, but their program labor is volunteers. Think Girl Scouts, boy Scouts, you know Big Brothers, big Sisters. When we think about all these different programs where we have volunteers delivering services, that's a lot. There was a study that showed that 80% of nonprofit leaders say volunteers extend their organization's reach. So when it comes to scaling and other things, volunteers extend their organization's reach. So when it comes to scaling and other things, that's an important piece of what they're about. There are cost savings right Improved return on investment, if you will. Almost three out of four nonprofit leaders say that volunteers provide cost savings to a great extent. There's an interesting data point that's often cited in the field that for every dollar a nonprofit invests in volunteer engagement meaning recruitment, management and then use of volunteers they can expect up to a $6 in return. This is a data point that you know many people make, so you can see that true benefit of all of this. There are other benefits that people don't often think about in terms of volunteerism for the nonprofit sector. Oftentimes the volunteers are able to help enhance community engagement and public support. They themselves might donate more. They can help with donor cultivation, they can help diversify funding streams. They become a resource. They can be a giver, but they can be a resource in terms of their networks and everything else. So it's a very powerful and important part of the sector.
Speaker 2:I myself spent a few years doing this work at a national level. There was a group called Reimagining Service doing this work at a national level. There was a group called Reimagining Service really looking at trying to advance volunteerism and actually we had some data at the time and I did a study that actually showed that when it comes down to it, when nonprofits effectively engage and manage volunteers well, what we were calling at the time and some of the work that we were doing in the field and this was from folks like Points of Light and others that were doing this kind of great work California volunteers and others we found that from a data set that we had of nonprofits throughout the country at the time it was an organizational assessment data that we had when I was working at TCC Group we found that nonprofits with effective volunteer management experience they benefit in terms of cost savings, increased public support, enhanced service delivery capacity we actually published a paper on some of this work as well and the whole notion of a service enterprise, where nonprofits become a little bit more formal about their strategy around volunteer engagement, recruitment, management, and not just for program. It could be for a number of things operations, administrative work, other types of stuff. There's huge value of all that volunteerism.
Speaker 2:Now, as is the nature of our podcast, you know, we like to tackle some of the challenges as well and look at some of those challenges that come with this, and I do say that there's some really great upsides to volunteerism, but there are challenges facing the sector. Even those benefits are being challenged that I just talked about. Covid has really taken volunteerism in another direction, if you will. The recruiting of sufficient number of volunteers is nearly half since post-COVID, according to some studies. During traditional workday hours there's some skill deficits. Turnover rates are much higher, ranging from 25 to 50 percent in 2015 and continuing to be even larger post-COVID. So there are a lot of real challenges with some of this work. There's a lot of burnout and there's a lot more demand to try to demonstrate impact and value of volunteers and it's being hard to fulfill that.
Speaker 1:So how does that level of turnover compare to earlier years? Because you know you said 25-50%, so what was it like before?
Speaker 2:was it like before? Because it's always a bit. I think turnover has always been. I wouldn't imagine it's a whole lot lower pre COVID, but I do think COVID really changed things. Now we still are waiting to see if there's some different type of rebound. But I think organizations are still challenged a little bit post COVID to get back to where they were. But to your point, I think historically and I'd have to look up some of the research there but I would imagine were challenged a little bit post-COVID to get back to where they were. But to your point, I think historically and I'd have to look up some of the research there, but I would imagine historically the numbers are not that much lower. But COVID definitely had an impact.
Speaker 1:So along those lines assuming we're in that range, it gets to. I think a conversation we had in one of the earlier episodes on the exhausted sector about the implications of the investment of time in training people and the cost of training people and that you know, every time somebody leaves, whether it's an employee or a volunteer, it's like three times the cost of the investment when you have that kind of turnover. So that's a very, very high turnover rate.
Speaker 2:Well, and I actually have another data point I did pull up real quick, which is that the formal volunteer rate dropped seven percentage points. So what it was, as this is the volunteer rate, so a little different than the turnover, but you can see the implications in terms of just being able to get your volunteers kind of going. The formal volunteer rate dropped by seven percentage points from 30% in 2019 down to 23% in 2021. This is the largest decline since the government has been collecting data on this. Two in three volunteers decreased or stopped contributing time due to the pandemic from the research in terms of what they're saying, and we have not really recovered to pre-pandemic levels just yet.
Speaker 1:Yes, recovered to pre-pandemic levels just yet? Yes, do you think? Another variable, another factor that may play into this is generational change, and you know that, you know. I know that the younger generations than me, of which there are now many, have a very different view of philanthropy, and so I wonder if there isn't a comparable change in their view of volunteerism.
Speaker 2:That's a really good question and I could imagine there might very well be some generational differences in terms of volunteerism. Yeah, that's a great point, and let's assume that there are some differences by generation. I don't have the current data on some of the younger, the kind of younger, the volunteerism, whatever that rate may be. We go from minimum wage to $30,. It's $100 to $200 billion. So if that's declining significantly and we're not seeing it recover yet from a pre-pandemic stage and it's true that volunteerism, especially effective volunteer engagement and management, is something that's critically important I think one of the things you mentioned a moment ago is the reality that this is also something that has to be funded.
Speaker 2:It has to be. You have to resource this if you're an organization that's really going to leverage volunteers in a larger scaled way. I'm not talking about organizations that may never need more than a few volunteers. We're talking about ones that really develop a more formal strategy for volunteer engagement, recruitment, management, all that Maybe. They play a very important role on programs and services. These organizations have to invest in making that happen. Well, guess what that is? That's overhead, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I know from my experience that best practice is to approach the volunteers as quasi-employees and that there are certain basic building blocks and it costs time, as you indicate. So that means everything from the screening process, the orientation process, the ongoing supervision, feedback and the like All of those things have a volunteer as the head of the volunteers and that that volunteer will manage all of that stuff that I just said and in my experience that's nine times out of 10, unless it's a very simple, very small, very limited kind of thing, that is, uh, unfortunately delusional, and so there really is a significant cost and investment to do this right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree yeah, it's a big problem too because, again, if we go back to some of the challenges we've talked about on this show, this kind of historical ethos of like everything should be free, we shouldn't have to fund it, my, I want every dollar I donate to go to, you know, the families or the people that are being served, um, and so, even in volunteerism, oftentimes there are a lot of folks out there in the general public who, when it comes to non-profits, even if they're on the boards of non-profits, their first knee-jerk reaction is oh well, just get a volunteer to do that, we'll get a volunteer to do that, we'll get a volunteer to do that. And the problem is eventually, when you start to think about again, communication, coordination, management, recruiting, training, getting them up to speed, all the things that matter. And, by the way, you also have to focus on all the other stuff. You can't just volunteer, you also have to go through background checks and criminal checks and everything else, especially if you're working with children. So, when it comes down to it, like all of that costs resources and there's like two ways to think about this.
Speaker 2:And one of the challenges that's in the sector that I don't like is there really are a lot of folks in the general public who are like get a volunteer and if something has to be done, get somebody to donate those resources. Right, like okay, well, if it's going to cost us to get the criminal background check, let's call the police department and figure out how we can get it for free. It's like everything's for free but eventually what you're doing is still diluting time and creating all kinds of pain and suffering and eventually you're never going to get the quality, the quality control, the quality management that's required to make this happen. Again, the overhead problem comes up. Again, the non-profit starvation cycle comes up.
Speaker 1:You know, when you talked about how you can even have board members that are making these kind of suggestions about the volunteers, I refer back to episode eight, and it gets back to one of the fundamental challenges, I think, of the sector, where you have volunteers that are leading the organization and more often than not, without adequate training and understanding, they will come up with what I would describe that sort of thing as naive, and then sometimes even the busy work of trying to do something that really is not pragmatic and it's not going to work. So I think and those, by the way, are, as you indicated earlier, dollar for dollar hourly costs those are probably the you know. So if it's $30 an hour on average for a typical board of, let's say, 12 liters of a board, you know it's like thousands of dollars an hour of brain time and expertise, and even then these kind of unfortunate events transpire often.
Speaker 2:Well, we don't also take into account what this does for getting agendas, policies, practices and programs going, because oftentimes what that means is everything is delayed and there's inconsistencies. We talked about the turnover rate amongst volunteers, so we already have a turnover rate problem from some of our frontline practitioners of like an average of a year and a half that most social workers, practitioners, caseworkers. When we think about the traditional human services model, right, the turnover rates are just astronomical. Now add on top of that the volunteers, and now we're like oh, let's get volunteers to do this. Well, guess what? You bring them on board, they, the volunteers. And now we're like, oh, let's get volunteers to do this. Well, guess what? You bring them on board, they're a volunteer, there's no accountability. And let's say, two months later they're like you know what? I don't really want to do this. They should stop showing up. Now you've got to spend all that time. And so you lose time, you lose consistency, you lose quality. So, when it comes down to it, the investment in volunteer management and the formality of all the tools and processes in there are really critical.
Speaker 2:But this does raise an interesting, provocative question that we wanted to talk about, ken, which is on the flip side of this right Is volunteerism. We talked about the great stuff about it. We talk about why it needs to be invested in, and I do believe that volunteerism is fundamentally an important part of the business model of the nonprofit sector. But we have to ask the question, because it does get asked by others out there too In some ways is there a downside to volunteerism? Does it hold the nonprofit sector back in some ways?
Speaker 2:I'll throw out a few different provocative thoughts on this. And what sort of devil's advocate thoughts on this. Does it leave the nonprofit sector in a perpetual state of never fully professionalizing right? What does it do for things like program outcome accountability, if your volunteers are the ones delivering your services and we come with all the problems of turnover and all the other things that they need Like at some point? Does volunteerism hold the sector back? I'm going to talk about it in a little bit, but let's just start here with respect to you know, just thinking about it. You know this is a question of is there an over-reliance? Is it too much of a default position? Does not enough get done because of it? Does it affect our outcomes, you know? Does it affect the quality of our programs. Does it actually affect when and the quality of what we do operationally with volunteers that are helping to do finances or do fundraising? What are your thoughts?
Speaker 1:Well, there's also some that would argue in the opposite direction.
Speaker 1:I've worked at, the more complexity of the kind of services and the challenges of the people being served, the more it does require, in my opinion, professional expertise and certifications and lots and lots of training.
Speaker 1:And so typically, you know I mean I don't have any scientific information but my impression, anecdotally, is, as an organization gets bigger and is addressing more complex needs, the impact and the value of the volunteers sort of becomes less useful and sometimes even a burden for those organizations. You know, there is something else that came to my mind, which is I had a conversation recently, I think it was, with our HR department and it's like if you volunteer, quote unquote in a for-profit organization and it becomes evident that you are doing a role that somebody else is getting paid for, there are some latitude to use volunteers for roles that could also be paid roles, and you know that sort of gets back to this whole question of it's almost like so does that deflate wages? Does it, you know, create this sort of? You know it gets back to the whole thing how nonprofits typically pay less and so volunteerism is a part of that whole system of the full cost not being reflected in the work. So that's the other side to your point, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that. Yeah, I think, when it comes down to it, I see some parts of the argument that you know we have to be, we do. This is nuanced Volunteerism. It can be a good thing, it can be a bad thing, it can be a neutral thing and I think, just like anything, but we really do. It does create some risks that we need to acknowledge. Um, you know, there are positions that really should be filled with professionals and we're having volunteers do them. Um, we'll talk about in a moment.
Speaker 2:Part of the problem also with volunteerism is, you know, we were talking about the different age generations that you know volunteer. So the recruitment we were. But there's other issues also with respect to volunteerism, when it comes to, for example, issues of equity. We did a study in the Allegheny County, the Pittsburgh region, and looking at the importance of volunteers to helping strengthen nonprofits, and we did find that, you know, volunteerism does have some of those benefits where you know when you can recruit and manage volunteers, there's more that you can do programmatically, operationally. But what we found was that communities of color were statistically significantly getting less volunteers for the same type of programming, the same size of services, but the only difference was that they were serving communities of color or disadvantaged communities and they were getting statistically significantly fewer volunteers. Statistically significantly fewer volunteers.
Speaker 2:I remember anecdotally a mentoring program that I had evaluated years ago that struggled with recruiting volunteers, in particular mentors for kids that were in poor communities or kids of color. The recruitment of the volunteers was very difficult, so all the volunteers would say it would never be about. They wouldn't overtly say something about the race of the child, but they would say they were uncomfortable going into a particular community and I'm using air quotes here that nobody can see. But these are the kind of things that are creating these disparities. So volunteerism is interesting in that it is also impacted by some of the inequities and disparities with respect to resource allocation, to nonprofits, and so a lot of it too. It's important. But it's also important to note that a lot of the volunteerism that people feel good about in our sector is also volunteerism that is not necessarily getting equitably distributed.
Speaker 1:So the idea that people are not willing to volunteer in communities where there are many people of color is, as far as I'm concerned, horrible and unacceptable, but at the same time and this is not in any way to make an excuse, but I can understand in lower income areas for everybody of every color, there is typically a higher crime rate. It's, it's, and so I could see how one of the factors that could scare people away and again, I'm not in any way excusing it, but one of the things that people, one of the factors is is is personal safety. Um, and you know, I mean, I think that's something that is just a reality.
Speaker 2:True, very true, and so we have to. There are a number of factors to this. Like anything, there's no, you can't kind of just make this a very simple issue. There's a lot of complexity there. The point being, though, is that there are a lot of strategies, and if you invest in volunteer management recruitment, you also invest in strategies to be able to help when you're recruiting volunteers, to encourage them to approach it more more equitably. More equitably Oftentimes, my point being is that it may not be a community where there's a lot of crime.
Speaker 2:There are poor communities that just don't have the crime, and so part of it is. Does your volunteer manager? Are you investing in helping to address that concern? So, actually, no, the crime rate in this neighborhood is no different than some of the other neighborhoods. Yes, they're poorer, right? Yes, there are people that maybe, if you're a white volunteer, they don't look like you, but doesn't really that shouldn't matter, right?
Speaker 2:And usually, if you kind of confront the reality, it's, you know, it's those kind of extra efforts that we have to invest in to really try to write this and to steer this ship right, because otherwise we can fall back on a lot of excuses and and, by the way I, too many people do, perceive a high crime rate for correlational factors that it won't just look up. The data is is it truly a neighborhood where there's a high crime rate? Um, oftentimes you'll find it's just a working class community that you don't know and that people speak a different language than you speak, or a different color than you are, or a different ethnicity or background. And if you were given the data points, maybe you might change, and if you don't, then we kind of know where you're coming from and we can think about how to volunteer a better, how to recruit a better volunteer. So at the end of the day, it's it's something we do really have to pay attention to. Um.
Speaker 2:But to come back to the to the point also around volunteerism and some of the challenges with, with the volunteer model in the nonprofit sector, we talked about the professionalization issue, um, the other one is we have also talked about and alluded to the hidden cost of volunteer labor. If we really don't, you have to educate people and oftentimes the folks that want to push volunteer, volunteer, volunteer, are the same ones that are like I don't want overhead, low overhead, low overhead, low overhead been slapped on as the charitable sector, the cherry. It just automatically draws up as like well, we shouldn't have to pay for it. It's as classic as is it free, is it free? So, when it comes down to it, we have to invest. So there is an overhead investment that is necessary. So there's the overhead problem, and I'm going to come out a flip side of the coin, of the overhead problem on the other side in a moment here, so I just want to jump back for one quick second.
Speaker 1:It sort of overlaps with a couple points, but when we were talking about the high turnover rate of volunteers, the other side of it is the volunteer experience, and one of the other problems that often happens is that volunteers are given dull, unchallenging, grunt work and, as a consequence, that's part of the reason why you may see that kind of turnover, because many volunteers imagine that they're going to have an impact to help people and to change people's lives and they end up, you know, doing filing or some kind of grunt work that the organization just doesn't want to pay for.
Speaker 1:And so I think that also does play a part in all of this that the best practice is to make sure that the role that you have, this onboarding, you have this conversation with the volunteers to be certain that it is going to be what they expect, that it's going to be fulfilling. And I think you know it also gets back to the notion that organizations need to really think through and perhaps even poll their stakeholders and the people that might volunteer to get a sense of here. Are the things that we have that could use a volunteer, and are these things of interest to you? Because I do think that that's another factor in the nature of this high turnover rate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, agreed, agreed. I do think that a lot of the turnover there it is that kind of grunt work. I think there's also a challenge too with educating the public as well. You know, you've got a lot of people in the public and I remember I've actually evaluated different volunteer programs, base programs, right, where you're getting volunteers who insist that they want to bring their expertise.
Speaker 2:This happens oftentimes with, like you know, somebody that's a retired accountant or whatever the case may be, and there's a certain expectation also of the volunteer as to being able to kind of, because I'm volunteering and I'm an expert, you should kind of take my advice, take my lessons, take everything I have to say and change, because you poor, volunteer kind of need me and I'm an expert, and so and the challenge we have with that is oftentimes they don't even come from the nonprofit sector and there's this expectation that some volunteers come with and so at the same time you don't want to burn volunteers out with respect to doing grunt work, at the same time, volunteers with expertise who are coming in to help organization, especially if they don't come from the sector and understand what it's like to run a nonprofit. Please stop putting yourself in the position of like oh you poor little volunteer, you know, nonprofit organization, you really should listen to me because, because I come from the private sector, I'm, like you know, very knowledgeable and an expert. So please listen to me. And if I don't, I think there's just as much on the burnout on that side, which is putting experts in air quotes, coming in and being disappointed with the fact that the nonprofit either A doesn't listen or I can't do anything with this nonprofit because you know it's a nonprofit and they just it, just it just can't apply. My stuff it's. You know I give up, and that's another side of the problem you have to find.
Speaker 2:This is why investing in management recruitment really being formal who do you want as volunteers? What capacities do they bring? How will you support them? How will you celebrate them? How are you going to retain them? What do they need? Talk to them. I mean, you have to put that's time and, by the way, it's money. You have to invest in that in order to get those kind of results.
Speaker 1:Two things in response to that. One is when you talk about experts, like from the for-profit sector, that is an oftentimes phenomena in my experience on nonprofit boards, and again I refer back to episode eight. And so what ends up happening if they're a board member and they're basically your boss as the head of an organization? On the staff side, you could end up wasting a lot of time doing busy work and or having some very, very uncomfortable conversations with your bosses about the fact that they don't know what they're talking about. And that can be a very tough conversation to have. And that's why there's the old joke that if you're the head of a nonprofit, you can say something 20 times to the board, but if you can have an expert come and say it, it's like, oh, why didn't we ever think of that? So that's one thing, but the other thing I did want to say about volunteers and the challenge of volunteers and the turnover of volunteers, in addition to the grunt work and the dull work, is the other side of the coin.
Speaker 1:For example, I ran a homeless shelter Initially. It was a small nonprofit where we served about 20 homeless people at a time and we were very small. We relied on volunteers every day, people at a time, and we were very small, we relied on volunteers every day and one of the reasons for turnover was because many of the volunteers had this notion you know, homeless there. But for the grace of God, go I. They just fell on hard times. And when they see that is true for some, but when they see chronic mental health issues, chronic substance abuse issues, they became scared, they became frustrated, they became this like oh, that's not what I signed up for, because their expectations and again it speaks to are we providing our volunteers with a realistic orientation and understanding of the nature of who we're serving and the kind of challenges they face. So that's another piece of this where volunteers often, you know the whole way that we're training and preparing and onboarding volunteers is off the mark.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so true. It's so true. And I have to say, as somebody who used to be on the front lines as a social worker, a caseworker, I often I found situations where some of our volunteers were causing problems because they didn't have the training, they didn't have the experience they were filling a job, even sometimes if it was just sitting at the front desk. I was a caseworker for the homeless, ken, and I would sit at the front desk and greet people and take their names and put them on the list to see which caseworker they were going to sign up for, and all that kind of stuff. And we had some that were great don't get me wrong kind of stuff. And and we had some that were great, don't get me wrong, but there were some that were not and we were in a um, a faith-based organization, uh, is where the services derived. And and, by the way, this is not a comment about faith-based, but I'm just saying it because, as a part of the context, um, this particular volunteer that was causing problems with our clients to the point where they were getting upset, I'm convinced there were ripple effects, that they were getting upset and we are talking about people with mental health issues, substance abuse issues we had all kinds of fights and knives would come out, all kinds of. We were a drop-in center and stuff would happen all the time center and stuff would happen all the time. And we couldn't get rid of this volunteer because the pastor that was in charge it was a relationally and what they were doing. Their philosophy on this was if somebody is a volunteer, you know they're giving of their time. They should be able to volunteer. So it's almost like it's our privilege to have this volunteer and therefore so it was almost worse, because there's no accountability, no consequence for this right and there's a protection of some volunteers and some of that volunteer ethos. And the reason I brought up faith-based is only because there was a lot of conversation that happened or justification that had much more to do with a faith-based justification of what volunteerism is.
Speaker 2:And this is not a job, it's a. It's a, it's a give back, it's giving the community. You know we've got to work with anybody, and so at this point you start to get very frustrated because I'm facing the consequences of dealing with the clients who come into my office, who've been upset or irritated by the way they were treated or whatever happened, and so it's just one of those things where you get to a place where it's like again volunteerism is a wonderful tool and it's a resource for the nonprofit sector and I would always want that resource there. But it takes strategy, it takes planning, it takes thoughtfulness in terms of recruiting and who you're bringing in, and it takes accountability. There should be no volunteer that can stay if they've done any harm or if they're causing problems with getting stuff done, and so it's one of those things. Volunteerism because you volunteer doesn't trump doing a good job. You know it doesn't remove that. Do a good job, otherwise I don't need you. There's the tour, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I think that every organization that is thinking about having volunteers, as the saying goes, needs to make sure that the juice is worth the squeeze and that the effort and that the investment to do it right will be adequate and that the position will be challenging and satisfying enough to the volunteer and that the profile of the volunteer to have a certain amount of training is going to be able to meet the needs of those being served All those things. There needs to be an honest assessment of all that and in some cases the conclusion may be we shouldn't have any volunteers in this role or in that role, because it just doesn't fit. But I completely agree with you. I mean, I know for, especially for smaller organizations that are trying to provide, deliver services, they wouldn't be able to do it without volunteers, but there still is.
Speaker 1:There's a real balancing act, and I don't think that it's always understood, and that's the other part, which is a lot of these very young or small starting out organizations. It's not just that they are volunteers that start them out, and sometimes they hit a wall because their expectations of what they're going to accomplish and then the real world of the challenges are so different that it's even. Even the founders have to perhaps sometimes take a take a take a look and reconsider. But the small, I believe my premise is that smaller, smaller the organization is, the more vitally important volunteers are for its very basic operations and survival, not to say that some larger organizations may utilize them, but it's not so central to the functioning of the organization.
Speaker 2:That brings us to an interesting question and one of the provocative questions that gets asked by the field oftentimes. And one of the provocative questions that gets asked by the field oftentimes as organizations get larger and we talk about larger organizations and they grow to a pretty big scale, is there a role for volunteers? You know, I mean in so many ways we do think of grassroots as pretty much all volunteer led. Um, once you start to establish positions, start to get a salary going, you got a CEO, executive director. You know you get to hire a few people in your five, 10 staff, now 15, now 20, but let's say you get a big government contract, you expand, you grow, you're providing human services, you take on multiple services, stuff like that. Does the need for volunteer labor program or operational, does it just evolve with size or is there some point? It doesn't matter. You know like you're running a large organization, what's the role of volunteers there?
Speaker 1:a luncheon for appreciation for staff. We do have some volunteers that come into our day program and provide presentations to the people we're serving, but when it comes to the day-to-day operations, for a variety of reasons, we don't have much of that, and part of it is also, just like you know, because of who we serve. They have a lot of challenges. Where there's issues of liability and the extent of training that's required, it becomes less possible for us to have the range of kind of roles that we might if we weren't the type of organization we are. So'm. But on the question of size, I guess I, you know my, my sense is it's it's like so many things in what we've talked about, peter, which is it's like.
Speaker 2:I think the answer is right, that's it, that's it.
Speaker 2:I was thinking the same thing. The answer to the question is it depends. I think that there are very specific. You know, like you have, you have very specific population you're serving with liability, everything else you know. You're going to be very intentional about who you engage as volunteers and what they're going to do and not do. It's going to look very different than look.
Speaker 2:There's some large scale organizations like Big Brothers, big Sisters, girl Scouts, other things like where you know it's a robust volunteer model and they are scaling and they're growing. Now they're not the size of some large human services, health services, you know, in health care, that's an area where volunteers always play a role at different sizes of these organizations, whether you're a small clinic or you're a big hospital system, but they take on different roles. It depends on what they're there to do. You're not going to have volunteers, obviously, administering health care for certain things, but you are going. Development I think volunteer models actually evolve with your stage of development. So that's the other thing is it depends on where you are developmentally as well in terms of that model.
Speaker 1:I keep going back to episode eight and boards, but I think we talked in that episode that the role of the board evolves as the organization gets bigger, more complicated, it matures and in the beginning they're volunteering a lot, they may be providing the services, and as it gets bigger, the role in that way changes.
Speaker 1:I think the same thing relates to boards when it comes to volunteering in the day-to-day operations as opposed to when they go to board meetings. My personal opinion is and I don't know that it's written anywhere, but oftentimes if board members volunteer in the day-to-day operations, if they're not clear and often they're not on the difference between their job and the staff's job, the tendency of a board member to step over the line and get into critiquing operations and questioning everything that they're seeing around them is much more difficult. It's difficult for many board members to keep those things separated, and so my recommendation again, I don't know that anybody else, but generally I think, unless a board member is really clear and really understands the difference, the best thing for a board member that's sitting on a board to do they want to volunteer is to volunteer somewhere else if they want to get into the day-to-day operations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that brings us back to the point of, like we were talking about the different spectrum of volunteers, right, there are volunteer jobs that are a little bit more frontline or very basic in terms of some of the required skills and capabilities, and then there are more higher level positions. You've got a board member. That's a volunteer that then goes into the organization. The problem is they're kind of in a tough situation. This is why, by the way, ken, for me I like to separate all the conversation always between the board and all other volunteers, and so usually, as I'm referencing this conversation to me no offense to all you board members I don't think of board members as volunteers in the traditional volunteer management engagement sense. They are volunteers, I get it, but it's a very particular role. It's a leadership role, a governance role.
Speaker 2:And along those lines, if you're going to volunteer in the organization, then you need to take off your board hat and become a more community-based volunteer and you need to take your cues from whomever. But it's a very big challenge for people to do that. Board members keep their leadership hat on, it's just nature. But this also is a problem we have, even if you're not a board member. Once again, we say, oh, we need a tech person to come in and help us for three months. Why don't we just get a volunteer, a pro bono, volunteer tech person, to come in and help us? The problem is, if that tech person comes in and you need them to do X, y and Z and they come in as a volunteer, which you'll often hear is I think you need to do A, b and C, and so then what ends up happening is it's like I'm not doing it if you don't do A, b and C, because you're making a big mistake and I'm the expert.
Speaker 2:And please, please, please, nonprofit sector, nonprofit leaders, everybody, do not abdicate your leadership role. Send them to the wind, say goodbye. You can even fire a volunteer. Get rid of somebody that is not listening to what you need and meeting you where you are. That is not listening to what you need and meeting you where you are, and this goes very much for the expert class of like volunteers and, and this is especially the case, this is where I'm going to get into also one other piece, which is I just want to say one thing before you do.
Speaker 1:I just want to say amen, brother, amen. I say amen to what you just said, but go ahead.
Speaker 2:Well, it you know, it's one of the things that I've seen that is very frustrating and I've seen it both as a staff member of an organization a nonprofit organizations and evaluating different volunteer programs and different volunteer engagement practices and just seeing the detriment of not doing it, which comes back to the point invest, invest, invest. You need to spend some money and time and planning and effort and leadership time to really formalize what it is you need volunteers to do. What roles they fulfill. Please clarify what roles they will not fulfill. Why it's a volunteer role.
Speaker 2:You really need to justify why is it a volunteer role and not a paid role? Okay, if your answer is because we can't find the money, then that's not a volunteer role. Okay, and talk about a pandemic. That's a nonprofit pandemic. The classic I want to volunteer because I can't find the money to pay somebody Time out on that. That's not a good use of a volunteer, because part of it is, let's say, you get somebody that really knows what they're doing and they really do fit and they help you. They're not there forever and you can't sustain that position. If it's that important, you need to hire for it, you need to fundraise for it, you need to do what you need to do Shift, prioritize, do what you got to do, but don't do that.
Speaker 1:I think what you just said. I completely agree with it. However, my hypothesis is that the vast majority of nonprofits do the opposite of what you said and remember, because the vast majority are very small and their response and I'm not justifying their response would be we have no money. There's a desperate need out there that we're going to fill. If we don't do it with volunteers, it's not going to happen at all, and so we're going to ignore that advice and take the risk and, with all of the dirty, messy, deficits and problems that you've described, we're going to do it anyway because it's the only way, because we got no money, and I think more often than not, that is what ends up happening, and I think what we're saying here is this gets to the root of one of the fundamental problems in the sector and one of the dilemmas that is out there, and I think a lot of people reject that advice, even though I think it's very good advice.
Speaker 2:And I think a lot of people reject that advice, even though I think it's very good advice. Well, when it comes down to it, if we want a sector that is thriving and gets to that thing I always talk about, which it's one of three economic drivers, equally to private sector, government sector and if we want to really get there, you are actually causing more pain from a starvation cycle standpoint. By doing that, you're basically telling your donors, your funders and the world that if you don't get the money to do what really should be paid to do, you can do it with just the care and attention and the volunteer time, and what that does is it diminishes the value of what's being done. I believe, and I believe it also it really does jeopardize your outcomes. It jeopardizes your impact, it jeopardizes your ability to understand what your costs are If you're doing all of that, and this is also another reason why we definitely need to put a dollar value on every hour of our volunteers, because, in a way, we also need to track what the value of that time is. And this is where the independent sector and I love what they do, because, at the end of the day, for this purpose, we do need to put some quantification around the value of those volunteers, and part of this is really to be able to understand what those costs are.
Speaker 2:I'm going to talk about this in the overhead before we wrap our episode up, but let me just say this it's like to me this is a big, big issue and a big challenge I would put out to you all. I think we have a starvation cycle problem. I think the reason that the nonprofit sector is always pretty much a small, you know, a small part of a larger economy, right, I think, is because we're constantly compromising and we're asked to compromise on getting the resources we need for the value we give. And there's so much value we're giving that is not there because we just dismiss it, we volunteer it out, we just, you know, one time in kind we need tech and somebody gives us computers. We don't pay for those computers. That never shows up in the cost of what we do, of the small nonprofits and a handful of larger ones.
Speaker 1:You know, if you take that data from the independent sector and realize as much as $200 billion is-.
Speaker 2:And that was 2015.
Speaker 1:Okay, and that's associated with volunteers and if you assume again, assume that a significant amount of that is the case for the smaller nonprofits, it means that the supposed long tail is not quite as long as we thought. If you added that value to the 990s, the volunteer time to the 990s, then the tail would move. There'd be more sort of mid-sized nonprofits getting to millions rather than 50,000 or whatnot, because there are these groups that are so relying on those volunteers. And it also reminds me of in some of the discussions I think you and I have been a part of over the years with some of the experts. They would argue that many of these small nonprofits should close because they are sort of draining the effectiveness and the ability to do things. And I think that's also sort of implied with some of the recklessness in some cases I'm certainly not saying for all, but some of the inefficiencies and the bad decision-making of some of these organizations that are using volunteers the wrong way.
Speaker 2:That goes back to a previous episode we talked about, about the. You know just the market mechanism and the fact that we don't have that free market indicator, Like if you're not making a profit, you're going to have cash flow problems. You're going to have to go to a business because the private sector can't depend upon, they can't just volunteer out to pass their stuff together. If you will, They'll go out of business. Their cash will run out. Right, we don't have that. Oh, just bring in the volunteers, We'll just go ask for more money. Can you give us in-kind computers if we can't buy them? And at the end of the day, I actually believe that volunteerism is something that makes the overhead discussion that we had in a previous episode a real problem. So let me just paint a picture that I don't think people are really talking about, that we need to discuss. It's the fact that if you look at your 990 forum and you were to take an organization that is delivering services through volunteers, and if they were putting their numbers together correctly and they had their breakout of their administrative costs or fundraising costs and their programmatic costs on their expense form for the 990, you would find that if they were true, right that their program cost. If you were to look at a Big Brothers, Big Sisters or Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts, their program cost should be pretty low because all of their frontline staff are volunteers, volunteer program delivery model. You are naturally an organization that's going to have an overhead that is going to look astronomically higher because your program costs are so much lower. So when you see an all volunteer run program and they're reporting that their program expenditures are only are 80% of their budget or 90% of their budget, Something's wrong with what they're saying. Right, you can't be an all-volunteer program and that not be the case. So part of the problem when we talk about overhead, how do we get an accurate understanding of overhead if we do not account financially for volunteers? Excellent, point, Excellent.
Speaker 2:And so at some point, the whole volunteer piece, the fact that the number of volunteers gets reported to the IRS but it's never validated, it's not a part of a financial audit. We never know what that true number is. People puff it up, push it down. It really doesn't matter. Something like willy nilly. There should be some teeth in there. If your volunteer numbers don't look right, that should be a part of your audit. And then what we should also do is account for the value of those volunteers on the 990, somewhere, a separate page, somewhere there or something. There has to be an acknowledgement. We at BCT, with respect to our equip dashboard, we've actually calculated for every organization by the number of volunteers. They put out a kind of a value of volunteerism and looking at the impact and it really makes a big difference, Moving community impact needles and everything.
Speaker 2:But the problem is we don't put it out there because I'm not convinced that that data are accurate yet, because it is not one that is audited. It's just like how many volunteers do you have Self-report and yet we never take it off. It's just self-report, it's not audited, it's not something we care about. But yet $200 billion and we're not accounting for it. Let's say it's not $30 an hour, it's $20 an hour. So now we're $150 billion a year and probably in all terms now I'll bet it is $200 billion a year At some point.
Speaker 2:What is that doing to our understanding of overhead investment? So the thing that volunteerism needs is it's got to come out of this kind of shroud of like no accountability, no metrics, none of that. You've got to start accounting for it. We've got to take the value of volunteerism, bring it in. You've got to invest in it as overhead. If you have all program delivery by volunteers, then you have to be able to put that cost in as a value of volunteers or you have to figure out what the math means. Because here's what we're finding in our data, Ken We've got organizations that literally report that they only have 20% overhead, but the same type of organizations that are all-volunteer program delivery they're saying their overhead is in fact 80%, not 20%, and the 80% overhead it turns out is the predictor of long-term sustainability.
Speaker 2:So that honest reporting of a very high overhead for an all-volunteer program delivery model we're seeing is the one that actually predicts whether an organization is going to sustain or grow their programs over four years. When they report it too low in the same matched group and they're reporting it low because you know they're doing it, because they don't want anybody to think they're bad or they spend all their money on a cost to go to the program, when they report that low, it turns out those organizations that are reporting that low, therefore they must be accounting for it low. They must be audited in this way. They must be intentional, they must to some degree actually cause the cost to be different All of a sudden. That's hurting their long-term sustainability. It's hurting their long-term sustainability. So overhead volunteerism. All this interaction effect has got to be unpuzzled, it's got to be broken apart.
Speaker 1:Many of them, including Charity Navigator or Used to Work they still have overhead as a pretty significant factor, and the fact that this is so distorted or muddled in the way some of these organizations operate makes it even more important for there to be a more nuanced kind of way of looking at things like overhead, as you've talked about before. So all the more reason, but leave it there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so let's try to come to the kind of what are some of the good things we can do. So let me just restate a few things for what we've been talking about. One volunteerism is a foundational component, part of effective nonprofits in our sector. I think we all know that. It gives you the capacity to grow, engage more with the community. There's so many benefits to effective volunteerism. It's very important that we understand and deal with all of the quality control, quality management, invest in the recruitment, the retention, put together a very formalized as you grow and evolve, become more formal in your volunteer management model, become that what Points of Light calls the service enterprise, and it will reap benefits in so many ways, including some of the problems that we've cited in terms of volunteerism. I also believe that we also need to do a better accounting of volunteerism, a data-driven accounting of volunteerism, and I think we need to start getting more accurate reporting of the number of volunteers you engage. I think we need to break those volunteer numbers on the IRS form out to those that provide services and those that provide operational administrative support and fundraising support. By the way, a lot of volunteers do fundraising work for nonprofits, so break those out as well. Start to apportion your number of volunteers, start to report how many hours. What's your average hours per volunteer? These are the things that we need to start tracking and monitoring.
Speaker 2:Why? Because there's a lot of hidden costs with volunteerism that are definitely causing an infection on our notion of what's the right overhead. And, of course, as we've talked about before, ken, there is no right. It depends. But the point is, when we study it, it really does depend and they're all volunteer service delivery models that must have a lot of overhead and you need to accept that it's not a problem. It's not a problem because it's all volunteers. You can't have a volunteer mentality and then get mad at the fact that they're using volunteers and the accounting doesn't add up. It just doesn't work. So these are some things we really need to start to change and we didn't talk about it, ken. But the other thing is we need to start looking at the impact volunteers have If they're delivering services. Are you getting the outcomes? They need to be measured. We've talked a lot about outcome measurement. So if they're your program, you need to evaluate them. You need to evaluate the outcomes that they're helping the beneficiaries achieve right, and just because they're volunteers doesn't mean they're not accountable, okay.
Speaker 1:And that you're not accountable. That also gets back to the question of is the juice worth the squeeze? And so the best way to know the answer to that, if you're at all uncertain, is real, objective data on impact and seeing if that will and actually that also can supercharge the volunteers Remember they want to know that they're having a meaningful impact of impact measurement on the future, I think, of the sector once again is absolutely enormous and pivotal to the future of the sector really getting to where it needs to get to, and now we're saying that also underlined for volunteers all the more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, volunteers are delivering programs. We need to look at outcomes, measure outcomes, cost per outcome in all volunteer model is great. Think about it. I mean from a pure cost, but again, we should add the value of volunteers into there and we need to start holding ourselves accountable for that in a more deliberate way. I actually think there needs to be regulation and policy stuff around. You know what we're actually talking about, about volunteers.
Speaker 2:It's too much of a big part of our labor force in the nonprofit sector, but that outcomes cost per outcome. That also goes for volunteers that are providing administrative and fundraising support, operational support, even just front desk support, whatever it may be. At the end of the day, you should be evaluating the results of those also on your operations, on your efficiency. If you're not getting gains from it it's costing you more in time and effort then it needs to be revisited. So a big part of how we can advance volunteerism comes back to something Ken and I talk about all the time, which is we've got to get better data. We've got to get a better outcome-oriented data, got to appreciate that it depends. There's no one size fits all. There's no one right answer. There's no one size fits all. There's no one right answer.
Speaker 2:But with data, impact measurement, outcome measurement, better data that's the IRS forms and accountability, we could take volunteerism to a whole nother level and help it to again advance our sector, whereas now there are some with a fair question to be asked, which is is it holding us back? Does it deprofessionalize our sector? And I believe it doesn't have to. I can believe it's a powerful force for us. But there are justifiable arguments and the data do support some of the notion that it may be hindering us in some ways too, because we haven't been more thoughtful about it, more kind of deliberate about it, right, more research-based about it. So great thing, let's keep going. But that's my final kind of wrap up on the volunteerism piece. I throw it back to you, ken, for any final thoughts.
Speaker 1:Well, I just want to close by saying I've listened to a lot of nonprofit podcasts and I've read a lot of nonprofit books, and I think you probably would not hear this almost anywhere else that I'm aware of this kind of a conversation. And again it gets back to we're trying to be honest and frank about the realities and that there really are some problems in this area as well, and so we we really, you know, we treasure, treasure the volunteers. We think they're vitally important, but we also think that sometimes we can do more harm than good if we're not careful how we go about things, and this is another example of that. So I I will say, for those of you who do want to volunteer, there's a resource that is out there called Volunteer Match, and so I can tell you that we even have gotten board members through Volunteer Match, and so it's a great resource. And so we wish you the best in your endeavors with volunteers. And that's all I got for today.
Speaker 2:That's great, ken, and I was going to let that be the final word, but now that you mentioned Volunteer Match, I'll mention two other organizations that you might want to pay attention to. One is Points of Light. I think there's some really great resources at Points of Light. It's an organization that's been around a long time and really, really has moved the needle and has got some great resources around volunteerism and service enterprise and kind of how the nonprofit sector can do that work. And also, if you're in the corporate sector, there's a lot of volunteerism that happens by companies kind of, and the way they do that work and the way they do that work. Taproot is a great organization as well as a nonprofit, that knows how to tap a lot of those resources and make a much better match for effective corporate engagement as volunteers within the nonprofit sector, and there's some more deliberation there, there's some more matching processes, stuff like that. So I would encourage you all to look at Taproot as well as a resource. Other than that, we're all good, ken. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:All right, have a great rest of the week. Another episode done. Take care everybody, enjoy. Bye, everybody, see you.