Mission or Community: What’s the Priority for Volunteer-Involving Organizations?

What is your organization’s mission? Hopefully, you know. But we are guessing that unless you’re a volunteer centre, your mission doesn’t reference involving volunteers based on community input?

And maybe it should. In this Points of View, we take a deep dive into this fundamental question: What is the priority for volunteer-involving organizations – mission or community? And what if every organization had, as part of its mission, a mandate to involve community members as volunteers – a mandate that is fundamentally tied to why the organization exists and not simply how it achieves its goals? 

Let’s Define What We’re Talking About

This Points of View reflects a recent discussion between Erin and Breauna, where Erin shared a change in perspective she’d been coming to, based on Breauna’s work to ensure community inclusion in all aspects of the volunteer process.

Erin used to say that "organizations don't exist to provide a place for people to volunteer," which is true at one level. But perhaps organizations shouldn't exist if they don't engage community in their work? What if engaging the community, including as volunteers, was part of every organization's mandate?

If we agree that the involvement of volunteers is one of the primary unique aspects to the nonprofit sector, then what does that mean?

For example, generally in Canada, the US and England, the laws state that you must have a volunteer-based Board of Directors to be a registered charity. The intent is to ensure charities are led by and accountable to the community.

Yet there’s been a trend of corporatization of many Boards. This results in a focus that is more about recruiting people of affluence and influence than community representation. This, in turn, creates a disconnect between the organization and the community if Board members are not embedded in that community. This results in a sometimes unhelpful tension, especially when we look at large, multi-million-dollar charities compared to the bulk of charities, which are very community-based and often all-volunteer led organizations. 

Paid Leaders of Volunteer Engagement tend to work in the former category of larger organizations. Consequently, even when we involve volunteers in our work, it’s rarely at a decision-making level; it’s more often delivery of service and support. 

Looking Under the Hood: What’s Required to Engage the Community?

We all understand, from a theoretical perspective at least, that the mission of nonprofit organizations is intricately tied to making positive change in the world. We doubt we would come across any mission that says otherwise. We’d also probably be hard pressed to encounter an Executive Director, Leader of Volunteers or Board member who says they don’t engage with the community. But how? As receivers? As just end users?

When we actually look under the hood of these missions, and ask organizations how they engage with the community, we start to see the tensions of what happens when we practice that in real time and what we say.

For example, do you listen? Maybe. But are there formal feedback mechanisms? And how is that feedback intentionally integrated into strategy?

Consider how the following situations derail the ecosystem of care we are saying we wish to create:

• Listening but not engaging;
• Involving volunteers but not including strategic input from those the volunteers will impact the most; and
• Seeing the community as an end to complete a nonprofit’s mission and volunteers as a “tool” for accomplishing that, versus seeing both roles as partners in implementing the mission.

Questions to Ask and Answer in Order to Walk Alongside Community

We may ask volunteers about their engagement experiences – but do we ask the residents, clients and community members about their experiences with volunteers?

How about focus groups? How many times are those being served asked to speak into something and not seeing the outcome of their feedback – either directly in changes or as a report-back.

What about volunteers who come from historically overlooked or excluded communities and choose to dedicate their time? How are we supporting the nuance they may feel? Would we even know? How?

These practices are in opposition to the mission. As Leaders of Volunteers, there should be standards of connection, care, feedback and decision-making loops for community members, residents, clients and neighbors, and volunteers who are connected to the work.

When trying to accomplish this, we sometimes allow a myriad of “approaches” to take place because we assume that those approaches will affect the community in a positive way. We are all about innovation, but if innovation is being explored without a standard of care for all, then why does the innovation matter in the first place? Is the organization you work for – the volunteer engagement you champion – really living out its full potential, ethos and purpose if it is not holistically walking alongside the community?

We need to start thinking about the basic standards of engagement for community as we also learn and revisit the ways we ensure volunteers are set up for good, equitable, heart work.

Going Back to The Basics

If we carry on this line of thinking, it forces us to revisit several foundational questions: Why does our profession exist? What is its purpose?

On one level, the answer is simple: to involve volunteers in meaningful ways that enable its ability to fulfill its mission.

However, this line of thinking too often leads to placing volunteers in an ‘unpaid labour’ position and centres the organization’s needs. And it ignores that there is plenty of research that connects volunteerism to health benefits, both physical and mental. Consequently, volunteering is inherently connected to the health of communities, and not just mission fulfillment, for example through social capital, generalized trust and how functional your local government is. 

We may believe our organizations are benefitting the intended community but one of the fundamental principles of community development is that needs and activities should be driven by the community themselves. Otherwise, it’s community-based but not community development.

Similar to the corporatization of some Boards, we’ve seen the professionalization of many roles in the nonprofit sector. There are benefits to this, however we’ve also lost important bits along the way, like the real purpose and foundations of what the sector can and should be about: communities coming together.  

 Including Volunteers is the Point: Do You Agree? 

At the beginning of this Points of View, we asked this question: What if every organization had, as part of its mission, a mandate to involve community members as volunteers – a mandate that is fundamentally tied to why the organization exists, not simply how it achieves its goals? 

As we conclude, we taking this a step further to ask: What if beyond the specific delivery of its mission, every nonprofit or charity also held as part of its mandate to operate in a community-focused,  regenerative way? That we partner with community in solidarity, not charity?

How would you answer these questions? Do we believe that the point of our sector is to create space where community is built and sustained? Where people are brought together as active agents in addressing issues, solving problems and creating communities that work for all?

As Latin American’s literary leftist Eduardo Galeano so rightly said:

“I don’t believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.”

What’s your organization’s mission? Does it and should it include partnering with volunteers? We’d love your take on this.