Volunteerism Public Policies Can Hurt Nonprofits
Policy analyst Rick Cohen discusses the four things we should be worried about with public policy and volunteers.
Today’s public policies on volunteers are based on the idea that nonprofit work needs neither training, skills, nor decent pay.
Amidst the predictable praise for volunteerism and the Serve America Act, we at Blue Avocado detect the mooing of a sacred cow. Cow hunter and policy analyst Rick Cohen lets us know the four things we should be worried about with public policy and volunteers.
Is your heart warm from last week’s combo of National Volunteer Week and the anniversary of Serve America? Eyes wide open:
- Bounty paper towels announcing the “Make a Clean Difference” volunteer campaign
- Kohl’s department stores supplying employee “volunteers” to youth organizations
- Pepsi announcing 32 Pepsi Refresh grants
- Virgin Mobile’s program where Lady Gaga fans enter a raffle for tickets in exchange for volunteering at homeless youth shelters
- Oh, and $1.15 billion in federal funds for Serve America
Yikes! Who wouldn’t be inspired?
But, we’re worried. Not about volunteerism. Not even about corporate “volunteerism.” We’re worried about the dangerous assumptions about volunteering that are used to make public policy in Washington.
These assumptions reflect a deep misunderstanding of both volunteerism and the nonprofit sector, misunderstandings that can ultimately hurt both the voluntary and staffed segments of the sector.
The elephant’s tail
Despite the large funding and the anticipated deployment of 250,000 “volunteers” in low-paid positions (by 2017), the Serve America celebration did not focus much on how to maximize the impact of this social force either for community impact or for training volunteers for future employment.
Instead, the lion’s share of attention has been given to the relatively tiny Social Innovation Fund and its $50 million allocation comprising just 4% of the total Act. (The funds will go largely to grantmakers for re-granting; one of the 69 applicants for funding is New Profit, the former employer of the head of SIF, Paul Carttar. Click here for Blue Avocado’s coverage of SIF.)
As volunteer managers and nonprofit leaders know, the limiting factor for volunteer impact is NOT a shortage of volunteers, stipended or not. Instead, the limiting factors are the capacity of nonprofits to deploy them effectively, and the unusability of untrained, ill-prepared, temporary volunteer workers.
The two parts of Serve America that are designed to address these key issues received shamefully small portions of the funding: the Volunteer Generation Fund, designed to expand the capacities of “volunteer connector organizations” received only $4 million, and the Nonprofit Capacity Building Program (originally authorized at $25 million by Congress) received only $1 million (for the whole country!).
[Volunteer Generation Fund application deadline is May 18; Nonprofit Capacity Building letters of intent were due April 27 with full submissions on May 18.]
In short, the public’s attention has been drawn to the elephant’s tail rather than the elephant, attention that is blind to neglected support for the elephant trainers who turn the elephants into effective contributors.
Serve America: 250,000 below-minimum-wage jobs
If we follow the money rather than the fawning press attention, the main impact of Serve America is not in these small programs, but the intended quadrupling of the Corporation’s national service programs.
The bulk of federal funds for the Corporation for National and Community Service in FY 2010 ($1.149 billion) is intended to increase the number of AmeriCorps (stipended volunteer) positions to 105,000 toward the Serve America goal of 250,000 in 2017.
These efforts are based on four seriously flawed assumptions:
- That nonprofit work can be done effectively by enthusiastic-but-untrained volunteers or low-paid employees.
- That nonprofits experience a shortage of volunteers and do not need additional staffed capacity to support a large influx.
- That stipended volunteers do not displace paid nonprofit employees (that is, serve to increase the total nonprofit workforce by the number of volunteers rather than by a discounted number based on displaced paid positions).
- That “job creation” is fulfilled by such “jobs” — typically paid $13,000 per year full time, and less for part-time, well below minimum wage.
Instead, the realities are, to match point with point:
- Nonprofit work often requires high skill levels and significant experience, and should be paid appropriately if the work is to be sustainable.
- There is not a shortage of volunteers (63 million volunteers by one estimate), but rather a flood of people looking for places where they can be helpful. In many cases these are people who really do want to help, but lack the skills and training that would make them valuable contributors.
- Volunteers do displace nonprofit workers in lower-paid positions, at least according to the January/February 2010 Journal of Economics and Business.
- Stipended volunteer “jobs” do not offer enough for a person to live on, and contribute to the “casualization of jobs” in human services.
At a seminar extolling the Serve America impetus held at the Center for American Progress — a think tank close to the Obama Administration — Fellow Shirley Sagawa praised programs such as Teach for America and City Year, both programs that pay their volunteers, for their ability to “turn good will into outcomes.” Sagawa concluded that “public problems can be solved by ordinary citizens if they are called to action.” Resonating with American exceptionalism, Sagawa added it is “uniquely American to roll up your sleeves and get things done.”
The Obama promotion of voluntary action, whether entirely volunteer or stipended, is neither new nor solely Democratic. George H.W. Bush’s call for “one thousand points of light” was greeted with palpable public derision. Maybe it was because Bush was disinclined to put money behind the lights, something that Clinton succeeded in doing with the historic creation of AmeriCorps.
George W. Bush promoted a USA Freedom Corps on top of AmeriCorps and called for all Americans to commit two years to volunteer service. President Obama has pledged to triple the size of AmeriCorps, in part through the creation of lots of additional “corps” (such as veterans corps, Healthy Futures Corps) devoted to specific areas of need.
The American exceptionalism here isn’t volunteerism, but the incorporation of volunteerism in national public policy. Here’s the downside of the volunteerism drumbeat:
Substituting, not supplementing
Imagine if we suggested that the solution to the troubles of Detroit automobile manufacturers was to replace their workers with temporary, untrained volunteers. (Pause here for reflection.)
But when it comes to nonprofits, it’s a different story. Today’s public policies on volunteers are based on the idea that nonprofit work needs neither training, skills, nor decent pay. AmeriCorps will provide thousands of highly motivated young people who will contribute much, but they cannot substitute for trained, reasonably-paid, permanent staff.
Moreover, this assumption also undermines the notion that nonprofits constitute a viable career option. And in addition, research shows that while volunteerism is meant to supplement paid nonprofit staff, low-skill volunteers often end up substituting for the lower wage jobs in nonprofits.
Unequal wages
In many areas of public policy nonprofits are not treated with parity with their for-profit or government counterparts, for example, the charitable mileage deduction and, recently, the lower level of subsidization of nonprofits compared to small businesses for health insurance subsidies.
The stipended volunteerism juggernaut of Serve America creates “jobs” with AmeriCorps stipends of $10,000 to $13,000 that are above minimum wage only if you include the $10,000 scholarship benefit for those who complete the program and go on to get more education.
And unexpectedly, it was discovered that prior to the Obama Administration, half of AmeriCorps participants were actually only employed part-time, although in all likelihood many were working many more hours than their positions required — or were paid for.
The downside of substituting low-paid stipended-volunteer slots for nonprofit human services jobs is the dynamic of the “casualization of jobs” that Robert Kuttner of the American Prospect describes as jobs that pay low wages, offer weak or no benefits, and little in the way of job protections. Such jobs, which he describes as the “industry standard” in the human service sector, could be different:
“Congress could require that any job in the human services supported in whole or in part by federal funds would have to pay a professional wage and be part of a career track [with a] minimum starting annual salary of $24,000 a year, or about $12 an hour.”
That’s not much of a salary, but it might sway the public’s irrational thinking that the nonprofit workforce can be sustained with an oversupply of caring and concern to make up for the shortfalls in take-home pay and job protections.
What is needed is public policy that creates nonprofit jobs with good wages that motivate people to stay on the job.
What’s to be done?
First, we need to insist that the nonprofit workforce is treated equally with the business sector in government-supported job training programs, health insurance subsidies, and other areas. The rationalizations for disparate treatment of nonprofit employees is both wrongheaded and insulting.
Second, where nonprofit jobs are funded by government, those contracts should include funding to pay wages comparable to those of other sectors. In the most recent National Compensation Survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average earnings of nonprofit workers in community and social services occupations, $17.68 an hour, lagged behind private sector ($17.82), state government ($20.80), and local government ($27.51).
Third, we in the nonprofit sector need to make clear-eyed, strategic use of the stipended volunteer programs. Not only must we leverage these volunteers for public benefit, we must also structure their jobs as first steps in nonprofit careers. With the array of training offered AmeriCorps participants, we can work to see that training for nonprofit careers is included.
Finally we can and must apply the same scrutiny and critical thinking to public policy in volunteerism that we bring to public policy in other areas. Volunteerism is now a major federal program involving the nonprofit sector: we can’t afford to let the feel-good aspects keep us from seeing — and working to correct — the very harmful components of current policy.
See also:
- Social Innovation Fund: Where is the Money Going?
- Teach for America: Icon with Feet of Clay?
- Gas Rates, Volunteers, and Justice
You might also like:
- Treasurers of All-Volunteer Organizations: Eight Key Responsibilities
- A Practical Process Guide to Getting and Keeping Your Volunteers
- Volunteering Alone Will Not Save Us
- Up Your Game with Skills-based Volunteering
- Creating a More Robust Volunteer Development Program
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About the Author
Rick Cohen‘s investigative reporting appears in every other issue of Blue Avocado. His articles on the Decline & Fall of the Vanguard Foundation recently won a Min Award for journalism. A memory from his days as Director of Housing and Economic Development for an unnamed city in New Jersey includes giving a conference speech in Atlantic City on real etate tax abatements, and then playing blackjack at the “cheapo $5 table” the rest of the day while waiting for the mayor so they could go home.
Articles on Blue Avocado do not provide legal representation or legal advice and should not be used as a substitute for advice or legal counsel. Blue Avocado provides space for the nonprofit sector to express new ideas. The opinions and views expressed in this article are solely those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect or imply the opinions or views of Blue Avocado, its publisher, or affiliated organizations. Blue Avocado, its publisher, and affiliated organizations are not liable for website visitors’ use of the content on Blue Avocado nor for visitors’ decisions about using the Blue Avocado website.
A few fixes for the article, specifically the section which states: "The stipended volunteerism juggernaut of Serve America creates "jobs" with AmeriCorps stipends of $10,000 to $13,000 that are above minimum wage only if you include the $10,000 scholarship benefit for those who complete the program and go on to get more education." Actually, the education stipend – or as Rick calls it, ‘scholarship benefit’ – granted through Americorps is a paltry $4,725. How I wish it was $10,000!
Another detail which was slightly misrepresented is that this education stipend can ONLY be put towards ongoing education. Actually, it can also be used to pay off existing student loans.
Thanks for the interesting article!
Thanks for the correction. I missed correcting that correction in my article!
Correction on the Ikyurav’s correction:
"The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act made changes to the maximum amount of the Segal AmeriCorps Education Award. The amount is now tied to the maximum amount of the U.S. Department of Education’s Pell Grant. For terms of service that are approved using 2009 funds (or earlier funds) the award continues to be $4,725 for a year of full-time service, and is pro-rated for part-time service based on the full-time amount. For terms of service that are supported with 2010 funds the award value increases to $5,350.00. You can make payments from your award in full or part, and can take up to seven years after your term of service has ended to use your award."
from http://www.americorps.gov/for_individuals/benefits/benefits_ed_award.asp
-Emily
Thanks for the informative update!
Excellent analysis! I have volunteered with shelter-based animal rescue organizations for more than a decade. In that time I’ve seen the non-profits change from being providers of supplemental benefits to the shelter animals into funders of basic medical attention and humane services that local government has decided not to fund (despite legal requirements).
Any thoughts on how to reverse this trend? The volunteers are frustrated, but can only shrug shoulders and say "If we don’t do it, it won’t get done- then the animals will suffer".
In a way, you’re addressing not just the issue of how volunteers are used, but how nonprofits are used in society. Increasingly, nonprofits are being positioned to take the place of the public sector in providing specific functions and services–and as one of my previous Avocado articles noted, being asked to do so in the face of reduced grants and contracts from government and increased tax hits despite their tax exempt status. In other countries, the nonprofit sector is called the “voluntary sector”, like the volunteer basis of their operations. But when the public arena fades from its roles and functions, nonprofits end up “volunteering” just like the volunteers working with you at the animal rescue organization.
And also there are so many AmeriCorps that serve in public and private schools as tutors, assistant teachers and teachers such as the case for Teach for America. I can’t help but think that these positions are replacing good paying jobs for trained people in this area and the school doesnt get funding for more teachers aids because it can rely on external source of labor which they should actually be paying for. Teach for America brings in volunteers w no background in education to run a classroom at the expense of kids at low-income and underperforming schools. Many times they are sent to kindergarten and elementary classrooms, critical development stages where students acquisition of phonics and reading set them up for the rest of their lives. What is needed is more trained and experienced proffesionls, not for feel good volunteers to learn what it’s like to be a teacher.
Great article! And thanks for noting the corrections . . . don’t forget that the $4,725 education award is also taxable (not a fun surprise come tax season).
As someone with 10 years of nonprofit experience and having recently decided to commit to a second year as an Americorps VISTA at my current site, I can offer a unique perspective. While I completely agree with the problems inherent in the Serve America Act’s failure to address agency capacity to support an influx of volunteers, I have found my Americorps service to be of tremendous benefit to myself and my agency. I had heard about a wide array of experiences of Peace Corps and Americorps volunteers, so I chose my agency and position very carefully. I also came to the position with previous experience that could be put to immediate use by my agency to do what I believe the VISTA program is best at doing: testing out a new position to gauge it’s impact before committing funds to it. My second year of service is a bridge to allow the agency to find funds for what senior management has been convinced is a vital service to the agency.
While changes to the quality and quantity of Americorps training seems important (although I have personally gotten excellent support in this area), I also think it is important for the agencies that are considering applying for an Americorps grant to have the capacity to support the placement and to think about their priorities. Having a temporary VISTA position or someone with no experience running a vital program like Volunteer Services, for example, shows a lack of understanding and commitment on the part of the agency, not the Americorps program. And I think Americorps is a great way for someone who might not have considered a nonprofit career to get a closer look and perhaps feel inspired to commit to a profession in the sector.
I was a foundation-paid consultant to some of the designers of the national AmeriCorps in its beginning stages under the Clinton Administration. We, or I should say, some of us viewed just as you said in your last sentence, a great way for people to get a taste of a career in the nonprofit sector. There are lots of different experiences with AmeriCorps, as the comments in response to this article attest, but the nonprofit sector overall has to make sure that AmeriCorps gets properly structured and used for nonprofit and public sector career building, not for creating a low-wage alternative to well-paying jobs in the nonprofit sector. I have faith that the new leadership of the Corporation for National and Community Service has a perspective on nonprofit work as a career option and will work toward that end.
Another note from a current AmeriCorps volunteer:
The "array of training offered [to] AmeriCorps participants" is not actually useful. I am lucky to work for an organization that provides significant training and support, but AmeriCorps itself has nothing to do with that. AmeriCorps provides two training sessions with inept, long-winded, out-of-state trainers on subjects that have been so generalized, they are basically irrelevant to the work we do at our organizations. Their attitude toward their volunteers is also insulting and deeply disrespectful–the experience of the volunteers at these trainings is similar to the experience of being a high school student suspected of bad behavior. More than a third of my entering VISTA class left their jobs within the first three months, mostly for these reasons rather than the extremely low wages.
Additionally, I would like to note that AmeriCorps VISTA actually prohibits its volunteers from holding outside employment to supplement their incomes. AmeriCorps also provide little-to-no support for obtaining the benefits that such a tiny stipend entitles us to, such as putting our loans into forbearance and obtaining food stamps.
I love working for my organization, but thank you for pointing out that AmeriCorps needs some serious work.
I would agree whole-heartedly that the training from AmeriCorps varies widely from program to program. I received great support during my State program, but not as much during my VISTA program.
How did you find out what fraction of your fellow VISTAs left in the first three months? I’m about to finish my year, and I’d be curious to know what percent of everyone at my PSO is still around.
As someone with 10 years of nonprofit experience and having recently decided to commit to a second year as an Americorps VISTA at my current site, I can offer a unique perspective. While I completely agree with the problems inherent in the Serve America Act’s failure to address agency capacity to support an influx of volunteers, I have found my Americorps service to be of tremendous benefit to myself and my agency. I had heard about a wide array of experiences of Peace Corps and Americorps volunteers, so I chose my agency and position very carefully. I also came to the position with previous experience that could be put to immediate use by my agency to do what I believe the VISTA program is best at doing: testing out a new position to gauge it’s impact before committing funds to it. My second year of service is a bridge to allow the agency to find funds for what senior management has been convinced is a vital service to the agency.
While changes to the quality and quantity of Americorps training seems important (although I have personally gotten excellent support in this area), I also think it is important for the agencies that are considering applying for an Americorps grant to have the capacity to support the placement and to think about their priorities. Having a temporary VISTA position or someone with no experience running a vital program like Volunteer Services, for example, shows a lack of understanding and commitment on the part of the agency, not the Americorps program. And I think Americorps is a great way for someone who might not have considered a nonprofit career to get a closer look and perhaps feel inspired to commit to a profession in the sector.
Excellent column. Truly important.
Excellent column. Truly important.
Wonderful! Thank you.
Oh, thank you for this article. You said everything I’ve been trying to say. When I’ve made comments about the flaws of Americorps to fellow nonprofit colleagues, I might have well been kicking a puppy for the reaction I got. You said it much better! Thanks for looking critically at a sacred cow.
Hello. I disagree very strongly with a lot of what you said. I will respond directly to what you view the *realities to be.
•Nonprofit work often requires high skill levels and significant experience, and should be paid appropriately if the work is to be sustainable.
Some AmeriCorps volunteers can fill positions requiring "high skill levels" and "significant experience" because they possess both.
Furthermore, nonprofits are not forced to hire AmeriCorps volunteers. They elect to. Therefore, it is the fault of the nonprofit, not the AmeriCorps program, if a nonprofit hires an underqualified volunteer
•There is not a shortage of volunteers (63 million volunteers by one estimate), but rather a flood of people looking for places where they can be helpful. In many cases these are people who really do want to help, but lack the skills and training that would make them valuable contributors.
Once again, nonprofits are not required to hire AmeriCorps volunteers. This is not a criticism of the AmeriCorps program, but an assumption that the majority of people willing to volunteer are unskilled.
To provide some anecdotal evidence, I met tons of VISTAs during my term of service both with my nonprofit and for others in the area. Each was very qualified, mostly overqualified, and doing great work.
•Volunteers do displace nonprofit workers in lower-paid positions, at least according to the January/February 2010 Journal of Economics and Business.
Volunteers displace nonprofit workers because it saves the nonprofit money.
What I think you mean to say is that if the AmeriCorps program wasn’t in place the positions once filled by AmeriCorps volunteers would be filled by higher-paid, higher-skilled, full-time employees.
I believe non-profits, upon the elimination/diminution of the AmeriCorps program, would expand their unpaid internship programs to fill the vacant positions. Unpaid interns make $0, which is as far from the poverty line one can get.
•Stipended volunteer "jobs" do not offer enough for a person to live on, and contribute to the "casualization of jobs" in human services.
Criticism of a *volunteer* program for not paying enough is fallacious. No one is twisting anyone’s arm to be an AmeriCorps volunteer. A volunteer volunteers.
Also, unpaid interns work for zero dollars because the experience is an investment that will pay in the form of better jobs in the future. The same can be said for AmeriCorps volunteers.
This being said, once again, nonprofits will not fill vacant positions with high-paying jobs upon the elimination/diminution of the AmeriCorps program. They will find ways to keep cost low, either through unpaid interns or increasing the work burden for existing employees.
(As you probably know, grants usually have a threshhold above which operations costs are not allowed to pass. Nonprofits are rational actors, if increasing their payroll was possible or made productive sense they would have done so already).
*Realities of what? Are you referring to employment across the entire nonprofit sector across the entire United States?
Thanks for your comments. I’ll address them in sequence: 1. Re skills and experience, please realize that much of the public, often abetted by our own public relations, thinks that what’s needed for nonprofit work is a big heart, a willingness to work for low wages, and lots of caring. As a sector, we have to counter that. Many AmeriCorps participants do bring some skills, they should be used that way, but we need as a sector to continually emphasize the importance of skills and professionalism in our work–and the importance of decent wages. 2. Re oversupply of volunteers, many studies I’ve seen suggest that there are shortages of volunteers in some skill categories needed by nonprofits and an overabundance of volunteers without applicable skills, though they possess the best of intentions and values. It’s not anecdotal, it’s real. The challenge for nonprofits is in part to identify and recruit volunteers with skills that fit areas of need. And yes, sometimes nonprofits mismatch volunteers with what they might productively do. 3. Re displacement of paid staff, I would refer you to Joan Pynes’s book, Human resources management for public and nonprofit organizations, available on Google Books, for a reference to the ethics of using volunteers to displace paid staff. Maybe I’ve spent too many years in the union movement, but we don’t want to position volunteers against salaried employees as a Hobbsian choice nonprofits have to make. 4. Re twisting arms, no one is twisting nonprofit arms to hire AmeriCorps workers. But as a society, we should be committed to paying decent salaries to people in the social sector. When volunteers end up displacing paid staff or lowering sectoral wage rates (because employers can get a stipended volunteer instead of an above-minimum-wage employee), we are making a societal choice that isn’t to the good. Let’s use AmeriCorps–and volunteers–as great supplements for nonprofit staff, let’s use AmeriCorps–and volunteers–as wonderful introductions to careers in the nonprofit (and public) sectors, but let’s redouble the nation’s efforts to strengthen the finances and compensation levels of nonprofit employers.
Thank you for responding to my comment. I think it’s awesome you respond thoughtfully to your readers. I think I’ll make blueavocado a regular read.
Maybe I’ve spent too many years in the union movement, but we don’t want to position volunteers against salaried employees as a Hobbsian choice nonprofits have to make.
There is nothing sinister about replacing paid staff with volunteers. Instead, it would be unethical for a nonprofit receiving donations to not do everything in its power to legally keep its costs as low as possible. Lower payroll = more money for the nonprofit’s mission.
This choice between volunteers and paid staff will always exist.
What do we do, deny nonprofits the option of hiring volunteers and prevent volunteers from volunteering?
Sinister, no. But the choice between paid staff and volunteer staff is often quite difficult. Sometimes cutting back on paid staff means something of a reduction in potential quality re mission performance. The problem in the debate you and I are having is the diversity of the nonprofit sector. It always strikes me that our 1.2 million 501(c)(3) organizations (or 1.8 million tax exempts) are sometimes connected by little more than their corporate tax status. A large university and a homeless shelter might be 501(c)(3)s, but the similarities beyond that might be a little sparse. Writers in my position are so often called on to make sweeping judgments about the “nonprofit sector” when it’s exceptionally hard to talk about the entire sector in one fell swoop. I’d love to pitch this volunteer vs. paid staff question to an ethicist to learn what an ethicist would advise nonprofit managers when presented with this option. Thank you again for your comments.
“There is nothing sinister about replacing paid staff with volunteers. Instead, it would be unethical for a nonprofit receiving donations to not do everything in its power to legally keep its costs as low as possible. Lower payroll = more money for the nonprofit’s mission.”
In far too many cases, lower payroll does conflict with the nonprofit’s mission. When an organization fights for housing affordability, but the employees can’t afford to live in the area, that’s in conflict with the mission. When an organization promotes low-income children going to college, but the employees cannot afford to save for their kids’ college, that’s in conflict with the mission. When a program serves elders, but the employees can’t afford retirement contributions, that’s in conflict with the mission.
The elephant in the room is that such organizations operate not as social change makers but as projects where privileged people who don’t need to work provide services to “the poors.” Yet these same organizations will lament that people from the neighborhood, graduates of the program, etc., don’t work there.
Thanks for the thoughtful post and the many comments. I was a Commissioner on the Illinois Commission for Volunteer and Community Service for 9 years and I constantly fought the battle to build infrastructure to support long-term volunteering in community problem solving. That means finding dollars to support operations of non profits who engage volunteers, so they can give them great support and maximize their impact.
It frustrates me that policy makers think we can solve complex social problems with untrained volunteers who only stay in their roles for one or two years, when we would not use the same level of talent to run our corporations, or our military.
I was one of ten people to represent Chicago at the 1997 President’s Summit and in a follow up meeting I was sitting next to the community affairs manager of a large corporation. When I mentioned that non profits need to beef up staff to support more volunteers, the person said "Dan, this is about volunteering, not about philanthropy."
Until we change that thinking we’ll spend billions of manhours, and dollars, but still have some of the same complex problems facing this country.
I write about this topic at http://tutormentor.blogspot.com and created the Tutor/Mentor Connection to try to build more consistent support for non-school tutor/mentor programs in Chicago. I look forward to connecting people who want to find ways to build the infrastructure supporting volunteer involvement in social change organizations.
We need to pay more attention to building the infrastructure of the nonprofit sector to absorb, manage, and properly utilize the energies and commitment of volunteers. Your comment about needing to beef up the staff to support volunteers reminds me about an article I wrote for Nonprofit Quarterly (“Volunteering by the Numbers”) in the fall of 2008. Data on U.S. nonprofits’ management structures for volunteers was a little hard to come by, but in the UK, the Institute for Volunteering Research surveyed 1,300 managers of volunteers in British charities to discover that 1/4 had no financial resources dedicated to supporting their volunteer operations, 1/4 of all volunteer managers were themselves volunteers, and the average volunteer manager was responsible for an average of 15 volunteers (the median number was 20). Building the infrastructure of nonprofits is a challenge of philanthropy and a challenge of government funding. Philanthropy has to remember that it has an obligation to build and strengthen the nonprofit sector, even though that isn’t quite what many foundation directors see themselves doing. And government has to provide nonprofit grantees sufficient indirect or overhead grants to ensure that recipients are not in the end organizationally debilitated in the process of working with government.
Having served as a stipended VISTA volunteer myself in a vicious recession in the early 1980s, I can attest to both the character-building side of nonprofit work, and the also the brutal underside of the nonprofit economy. And I do give a big shout out to VISTA, because my community organizing experience trained me to look out for the working poor in our own ranks.
One of my friends, a former information-and-referral worker at United Way, told me “Over twenty years, I have helped literally hundreds of people avoid homelessness, but I am now retiring without a pension and may soon be homeless myself.” Another time, my boss and the director of a Community Action Program caught me hitchhiking to a conference, because we had no budget for transportation. And, I still remember sleeping under a hotel banquet table at the national food bank conference in California, because – you guessed it – we had no budget for lodging.
As people throughout the sector are well aware, the problem has not been solved. In virtually any community in the United States, you can find underpaid workers working in human services, child care, elder care or other fields that have miserable wages and paltry benefits. In communities that consider living wage ordinances, nonprofits are often caught in the middle, since their ability to hike wages is constrained by flat budgets and a mentality of scarcity.
When we look at the broader economy, we see two big things – persistent lousy wages for millions of workers, and an insufficient number of jobs for everyone who wants to work. In 2008, the latest year available, 17.8 million people worked full-time year-round and earned less than poverty level wages — 17.1 percent of full-time, full-year workers.
And the labor market is indeed a high-stakes game of musical chairs. We’ve lost 8 million jobs in the last 2 year. 15 million people are officially unemployed and nearly 30 million people are unemployed or underemployed, when you include discouraged workers and people who work part-time but want full-time work. The National Jobs for All Coalition estimates that there are now 11 job seekers for every available job. http://www.njfac.org/jobnews.html
So, in this environment, we strongly agree with Bob Kuttner’s proposal that we make every human service job a decent job, with fair pay and benefits. Such a program would require significant public and philanthropic investments, but it would have an enormous payoff for workers and nonprofits, and for the community as a whole.
Rather than wringing our hands about purported labor shortages for child care and long-term care, for example, we ought to be honest and admit that there are plenty of workers out there, but that the private sector fails to pay the freight for decent human services, and the time has come to ramp up public investment. If we invested in child care and afterschool programs for all eligible kids, for example, educational outcomes might improve, delinquency rates would fall, and parents would have more opportunity to earn income and study for career advancement. A lot more money would be sloshing around in the economy because human service workers have more discretionary income, and the deficit would get paid down way faster because people are again working and paying taxes.
Two weeks ago, I attended the Blue-Green Alliance conference on “Good Jobs, Green Jobs,” which was attended by over 3,000 labor activists and environmentalists, from Steelworkers to Sierra Club members. There is tremendous power in this cross-sectoral coalition, which is collaborating at the community, state and federal level to raise expectations for clean energy, conservation, and even the eventual revival of the manufacturing sector, despite some very tough obstacles.
But I couldn’t help thinking that nonprofits can and should be the Third Leg in a national movement for Good Jobs in America. Maybe we need a Blue-Green-Pink and Plaid Alliance. We should get out of our issue silos, and build similar worker-community-advocacy alliances to press for substantial job creation and wage and benefit improvements for nonprofit workers. Virtually any human services advocate has a story to tell, that can end with a punch line regarding the economic, social and community benefits of improved services, and the employment and community benefits of creating jobs and raising wages for nonprofit workers.
The nonprofit sector can provide a badly-needed bridge to the 21st Century by suggesting ways to create the good, stable jobs America needs and wants. But we need to feel that we ourselves are entitled to a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. And we need to double down on ending poverty, and closing the vast human services and infrastructure gaps that leave millions of Americans without affordable housing, health care and child care, and other priority community services.
While I totally understand the perspective of your article, and my CPA would totally agree with the issues of paying equal pay for equal work…..the new Americorps programs do offer some perks that many student interns have not had access to in the past. As a non-profit organization that offers Master’s Level students and Bachalor’s level students, from a variety of counseling fields, social work and human service backgrounds the opportunity for mentoring, skilled supervision, on-site experience with clients, the opportunity to learn from speicalists in child play therapy, art therapy and various other modalities of clinical work and now, will actually receive some educational assistance and/or a nominal living stipend to do so. Schools have been using intern practical placements for years as a means to provide students experience in their field prior to graduation. It also gives them the opportunity to connect professionally with their agency or others with whom they work for their practicum, which often leads to job placements. These programs have been requiring students to do placements for years, paid or unpaid. As you can imagine most have been unpaid. With the Americorps programs over the next few years, we will have a resource to help them leverage some educational dollars and a stipend for living expenses. It does help open doors for them and get them off to a great start in a non-profit career. We seldom have to look beyond our interns to fill openings. It is a win-win situation. Jeanetta Issa, CEO CAPA
Dear Jeanetta: Of course AmeriCorps and internships have their place and value. Add work-study to that too. Back in ancient times, I started my nonprofit career as a planner for Action for Boston Community Development, one of the original anti-poverty agencies. I was a work-study kid from BU. The exposure to ABCD and the opportunity to be mentored by fabulous staff led me to a career in the nonprofit sector. The issue, as Chuck Bell’s comment makes clear, is to make sure that we don’t end up with a permanently underpaid nonprofit labor force, where underpaid staff end up displacing rather than supplementing paid staff. All of the comments here attest to the complexity of the challenge, made more difficult by the reducing funding many nonprofits encounter from governmental agencies and private foundations, leading them to find low-cost staff recruits to replace higher paid and better trained “permanent” staff. As I noted in one of my previous responses, AmeriCorps has some real potential for serving as a pipeline into the sector. But AmeriCorps stipends are hardly enough to cover living expenses, and we have to ensure that the public doesn’t become entranced by the notion that nonprofits can deliver its advocacy and service functions by compensating staff with sub-living wage living expense stipends.
While I totally understand the perspective of your article, and my CPA would totally agree with the issues of paying equal pay for equal work…..the new Americorps programs do offer some perks that many student interns have not had access to in the past. As a non-profit organization that offers Master’s Level students and Bachalor’s level students, from a variety of counseling fields, social work and human service backgrounds the opportunity for mentoring, skilled supervision, on-site experience with clients, the opportunity to learn from speicalists in child play therapy, art therapy and various other modalities of clinical work and now, will actually receive some educational assistance and/or a nominal living stipend to do so. Schools have been using intern practical placements for years as a means to provide students experience in their field prior to graduation. It also gives them the opportunity to connect professionally with their agency or others with whom they work for their practicum, which often leads to job placements. These programs have been requiring students to do placements for years, paid or unpaid. As you can imagine most have been unpaid. With the Americorps programs over the next few years, we will have a resource to help them leverage some educational dollars and a stipend for living expenses. It does help open doors for them and get them off to a great start in a non-profit career. We seldom have to look beyond our interns to fill openings. It is a win-win situation. Jeanetta Issa, CEO CAPA
Dear Jeanetta: Of course AmeriCorps and internships have their place and value. Add work-study to that too. Back in ancient times, I started my nonprofit career as a planner for Action for Boston Community Development, one of the original anti-poverty agencies. I was a work-study kid from BU. The exposure to ABCD and the opportunity to be mentored by fabulous staff led me to a career in the nonprofit sector. The issue, as Chuck Bell’s comment makes clear, is to make sure that we don’t end up with a permanently underpaid nonprofit labor force, where underpaid staff end up displacing rather than supplementing paid staff. All of the comments here attest to the complexity of the challenge, made more difficult by the reducing funding many nonprofits encounter from governmental agencies and private foundations, leading them to find low-cost staff recruits to replace higher paid and better trained “permanent” staff. As I noted in one of my previous responses, AmeriCorps has some real potential for serving as a pipeline into the sector. But AmeriCorps stipends are hardly enough to cover living expenses, and we have to ensure that the public doesn’t become entranced by the notion that nonprofits can deliver its advocacy and service functions by compensating staff with sub-living wage living expense stipends.
I read all of the above with great interest. As a professional volunteer coordinator, meaning that I have had training and years of experience in the field, I am happy to actually have a REAL volunteer coordinator position with a non-profit. I know this to be true: there are very few of us in this profession that feel as though we are treated sincerely as professionals and paid just as insignificantly. I have recognized that the infrastructure of volunteer centers is less cared about than child care workers and do not expect that I will make a living wage- lucky I have a well paid husband.
The last contributor basically said it all. We, as a society, must choose where out allegiance lies, basketball, football and movie stars? or the average well-trained folks who work hard and get paid little?
To my way of thinking, Americorps does two things; it bridges the gap for young people who need to find out a little about life, work, and where to go "from here", and allows those who may be struggling to choose careers or change careers to get a taste for something other than what they did before. The good news is, it also helps non-profits enhance their services and determine if additional staffing is needed in certain areas of their work.
This can be abused by the non-rpofit as well- I knew one volunteer center who was so dependent on her VISTAS and Americorps year after year that she would be on pins and needles every Fall worrying if she was going to get one. I wanted to ask her why she didn’t hire someone but I knew the answer. She didn’t have $40.000 to pay them. There is where some of the 1.5 should go: Support the centers who provide the service to everyone.
Volunteer Coordinator
Dear Volunteer Coordinator: Thanks for your comment, especially for its balance regarding the use and abuse of volunteers. As a volunteer coordinator, you get to see the full range of nonprofit behaviors toward volunteers and stipended volunteers. I found this part of your comment very interesting: “I have recognized that the infrastructure of volunteer centers is less cared about than child care workers and do not expect that I will make a living wage- lucky I have a well paid husband.” I was always trained by my human resources mentors never to inquire about much less make a salary judgment based on an employee’s access to income from family members such as spouses. I therefore always judged all employees’ salary needs as based on the job description and job responsibilities, not on the access to a well-paid spouse. But the reality is, as you imply, that for many of us in the nonprofit sector, that’s how we survive and function. For example, in a previous article for the Avocado, I think I noted that unpublished data from the BLS suggested that the proportion of the nonprofit sector workforce was roughly 22-24 percent, which is higher than the part-time employment proportion of the nation’s total labor force. Since part-timers generally don’t qualify for health benefits, one implication might be that these part-timers may be able to do without health coverage because they have a spouse with coverage. The fact that so many of us are able to make ends meet because we have a spouse with income and benefits is a telling characteristic of employment in the sector where being paid “insignificantly” is part of the picture. Thanks again for your wonderful comment.
One of the underlying problems with Americorps is similar to that of VISTA, Peace Corps, Executive Service Corps, RSVP, many student service learning programs, and Taproot. No doubt most of these are excellent experiences for the volunteers. The issue is: do they exist for the good of the volunteers or the good of society (as operative here in the work of a nonprofit)? I’ve just been through yet another experience with a group of MBA students working in "consulting teams" that has resulted in a useless product created by dozens and dozens of hours on our part (the nonprofit’s part), and for the students: great grades and resume experience. Oh and they are so pleased with themselves and their USELESS charts.
If we nonprofits are to be training volunteers, giving them great resumes, and also making them feel wonderful about themselves, why aren’t we getting paid to be doing this, instead of (in effect) having to PAY for it in staff time and stipends? (Can you tell how frustrated I am?)
As a director of an Executive Service Corps who is familiar also with Taproot, I can tell you that these programs are focused on providing quality services that are comparable with those of private consultants and consulting firms. In fact many local nonprofit consultants also volunteer with our ESC. Are they competent and client oriented when doing their private work and self-interested and incompetent when volunteering for ESC? I don’t think so, and neither do our clients, 100% of whom would recommend ESC to other organizations.
If skills based volunteerism is going to work it will be because we develop – and non profits learn to use – intermediary organizations like ESC and Taproot to offer well designed consulting, leadership coaching and capacity building programs to nonprofits.
Your nonprofit should not engage with any volunteer, whether they are reading to kids or “making charts,” if you have not defined the work that needs to be done and checked to make sure the volunteers are qualified and able to provide you with what you need. Rather than assume that these models are full of foolish and self interested people, consider how you are managing the engagement process.
It takes staff time to work effectively on organizational problems. If you are not convinced that you will receive services that are worth that time, you should not make use of these volunteer programs.
I would like to comment on this article because I have served as an AmeriCorps VISTA and as a Team Leader with the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (a program that includes room and board) – both very different programs where I was well-trained, and performed the work of a staff member. In addition, I would like to say that I made sacrifices to be in VISTA because the mission of VISTA is to eradicate poverty and when you are in the program, you live at the level of poverty of those you are serving – just for one year.
As far as AmeriCorps VISTA goes, it really depends on the nonprofit you are placed with whether your training is extensive and useful. After that, it is really up to the VISTA to decide how much effort they want to put in – it is a very individual role where you get back as much as you choose to put in. I met and surpassed my goals in my VISTA program, and I did not have to accomplish that by “burning out.”
I was also trained very well in NCCC – trained to lead a group of Corps Members and be an instant site coordinator with an educational, environmental, needs-based (such as Habitat for Humanity) or disaster relief effort anywhere in the country. After hurricanes Katrina and Rita, many of the first volunteers to help with the clean-up were the well-trained teams of AmeriCorps NCCC. I know from experience with many different nonprofits that regular volunteers come and go very quickly and are often not trained at all – no matter how many of them there are, they are very hard to hold on to at times. Whereas an AmeriCorps member is committing a full year of service to their country and will show up when other volunteers may not.
While with NCCC, I also had the job of recruiting for not only NCCC, but also the VISTA and State and National programs in the western region of the United States, so I know the programs inside and out.
I must say that as an AmeriCorps Alumni, I find it offensive that you would use the words “untrained” and “volunteer” so much in this article, especially if you partook in putting one of these programs together as you mentioned above. The AmeriCorps members I have encountered are very well-trained, and AmeriCorps is community service program, not a volunteer program. If it was simply a volunteer program, the living stipend and Education Award would not be available, the person would be doing the work for free.
While I understand that one of the main points in your article is to get people to understand that an AmeriCorps member could be taking the place of a well-paid staff member, I find plenty more nonprofits seeking a REAL volunteer, not an AmeriCorps member, to do a staff-level job for free as an intern. That is something you should be more concerned about than AmeriCorps members taking over the sector.
Finally, I would like to say that I am currently looking for work in the nonprofit field, and I fully understand that the economy makes finding a job in any sector very difficult. I know that I was well-trained, and performed successfully at staff-level capacity in both of my AmeriCorps positions, but it is because of articles such as this that characterize AmeriCorps members as “untrained volunteers” just wasting nonprofits’ time and money that gives my years of service a bad rap – and myself and people like me a harder time of finding a staff job with a nonprofit organization.
The article was about volunteerism as being promoted as public policy. We recommended using and structuring AmeriCorps to promote nonprofit careers. We didn’t say that untrained volunteers waste nonprofits’ time and money, that’s not there. What we did say is that using volunteers to replace higher paid staff is a difficult and troubling course of action. It may be cost-effective for the nonprofit, but doesn’t necessarily build a career-path, well paid path for nonprofit employment. Good luck with your job search.
Do you know what the AmeriCorps stipend amount was in 1994?
Sorry, I couldn’t recall, but I found this in a GAO report on the first year of AmeriCorps: “In addition to the education award, AmeriCorps*USA participants receive a living allowance stipend that is at least equivalent to, but no more than double, the average annual living allowance received by VISTA volunteers—about $7,640 for full-time participants in fiscal year 1994.” (http://www.gao.gov/archive/1995/he95222.pdf)
Thanks, Rick! I guess this means it was somewhere in between $7,640 and $15,280. I was wondering how the initial AC stipend compares with the current annual stipend, which is in the $11,000 range. Specifically, have there been any cost of living adjustments over the past 16 years, during which time the cost of renting has probably tripled? The only people who can survive on the stipend now are those who are lucky enough to have somewhere they can live rent-free.
I’ll look for the history of AmeriCorps cost-of-living changes for the stipend. It doesn’t seem to have increased with the rate of inflation over the years, even with the very low inflation rates of our Great Recession years. It is hard to make a go of it on $11,000 or thereabouts without finding ways of sharing expenses with others. On the web, there are several places that offer advice to AmeriCorps participants about how to survive on AmeriCorps stipends, obvious sharing housing costs with roommates being an essential component of strategy.
When I was with an AmeriCorps national, I remember always pushing for the high end of the stipends, but not just as a matter of having AmeriCorps participants (who we placed with urban Community Development Corporations) have enough money to live, but to attract them to work with CDCs as an attractive career options.
To answer you, I was recently offered an AmeriCorps position that pays $1,000/month, but was informed by the recruiter that “after taxes, it’ll be about $800/month”. There is no provision for housing, so I would have to somehow pay rent and groceries, plus the cost of moving across the country and furnishing whatever space I live in, all on $800/month. I was genuinely shocked that housing was not provided by the program – if I choose to do this program, at least half of my monthly salary will be going toward rent.
I work for a non-profit through Americore and would have to say that I am extremely frustrated with the amount of work expected in comparison to the compensation. $200 dollars a week is absurd anyway you put it but when you accompany that with working over 50 hours, my hourly wage comes out to about $2.50 an hour. Never again will I participate in this program. Community service is one thing, but being taken advantage of is another. I am overly qualified for the job I am at right now and feel as though I’m being abused.
1) It’s AmeriCorps, not Americore (though pronounced the same).
2) $200 divided by 50 is $4/hour. $200 divided by $2.50/hour would imply that you work 80 hours a week (twice the expected amount), which I find frankly unbelievable. I cannot imagine any organization forcing its volunteers to work a double shift every day for 11 months. Most AmeriCorps volunteers I have met have plenty of free time, and many actually volunteer at other agencies in their free time (as a regular citizen, not as an AmeriCorps member). My acquaintance with AmeriCorps members have mostly been on Habitat for Humanity build sites; a typical build day starts at 8:30am and finishes by 3:00 or 3:30pm, hardly a long day (with 45 minutes off for lunch).
3) “Never again will I participate in this program”: no one is forcing you to. Indeed, most AmeriCorps members only do the program once.
4) “I am overly qualified for the job I am at right now and feel as though I’m being abused”: You ought to have known (or asked your organization) about the responsibilities of the position, and if you had figured that you are overqualified, or the job description did not suit you, you shouldn’t have taken it. You sound like you think you could have gotten a much-better paying job, involving greater responsibilities, for a commercial organization, in which case the inevitable question is “Why didn’t you apply for such a job?”.
5) If you cannot deal with living at poverty-level for a year, then you shouldn’t be in a community service program. $200 a week sounds more than enough for groceries, and while the usual $200 monthly housing allowance is a bit tight (especially if you are living in a city), it can be done if you split a $1000/month, two-bedroom apartment four ways (with an extra $50 coming out of your stipend). NOTHING else in life is ESSENTIAL, ANYONE can live without going to the movies, eating out, paying for a gym membership, cable TV and internet (and even phone) service, for a year. (Unless you are writing from a public library, you shouldn’t be here on the internet anyway). Essentially, you seem to be complaining that the program actually requires you to WORK for the stipend, which is incredulous to me. What did you expect: that you were going to be paid from a taxpayer-funded program to wake up at noon and spend a four-hour day (including an hour for lunch), doing little more than putting your feet up and twiddling your thumb? Your whiny, complaining attitude is a disgrace to AmeriCoprs and volunteers/stipended service workers everywhere.
Why should it even be necessary to have to live at poverty level in order to participate in a community service program such as Americorps? I think your comments are very judgemental and unkind.
The low living allowance and stipend for Americorps volunteers is meant to align volunteers with the populations for which they are serving. The living allowance also does not effect most government benefits for volunteers who are receiving them. Volunteers who are receiving SNAP benefits for instance, won’t have their benefits reduced. Otherwise, this segment of the population would be less likely to serve.
We are very interested in this article as we know also in Canada there is little focus on building the strong organization that is required to support significant volunteer engagement. Everyone seems to think more volunteers is the answer!
One piece we think is missing in this article is that we know there are many very specifically skilled people who will gladly volunteer their time and talent to community organizations. The pay is not an issue, as they are being paid well in their workplace.
However for us to engage those skills and not pay for them requires a different skill set in paid employees. That skill set usually costs more and therefore we must begin to build a strong organization based on different skills in paid employees – the employees must have an ability to delegate, convene, and connect rather than be the super-do-it-all person! We have so much talent available to us if we only begin to plan our workforce differently. At Vantage Point (formerly Volunteer Vancouver) working with Executive Directors and Board of Directors to build those strong organizations is our core business!
I love this point. Working with skilled volunteers — and their limitations, egos and lack of familiarity with the field — is a skill that is usually far above what nonprofits pay for in "volunteer management" positions. And for instance, a CFO may not have the skills to engage finance volunteers productively.
I don’t think it’s realistic to get this kind of skill set and commitment in the hundreds of thousands of nonprofit staff. I think we need to develop a new type of intermediary: a "temp agency" for volunteers.
Jan – I agree with your observation about needing intermediaries to help nonprofits engage volunteers providing professional services to nonprofits. The assumption Hands On and others have been promoting that every nonprofit can work with professional volunteers just like they do with service volunteers is unrealistic.
However, I also find your assumptions – which echo comments I have heard you make before – that skilled volunteers equal "limitations, egos and lack of familiarity with the field" a highly prejudiced and unfair comment. Do you think consultants being paid $2000 a day don’t have egos, limitations, and lack of experience in areas of the sector? Should nonprofits avoid skilled people and advertise for "unskilled people" only, who apparently don’t have limitations? Or egos? Is a retired executive director doing pro bono work suddenly incompetent after 30 years in the field? Or a successful business consultant suddenly unable to attend to her client’s needs when she isn’t getting a paycheck?
Skills based volunteerism is no different from any human resources challenge. You need systems, training, professional staff supervision and feedback/evaluation to define and improve best practices. Given how little has been invested in this part of our sector (as in all aspects of volunteerism) there is clearly much more to be done to make the best versions of this model more available. Until we see bank bailout level money flowing into nonprofits to do the work we ask them to do we need this strategy, and we need to make it work. Being derisive and judgmental about the people who are doing it doesn’t help us advance the work.
I attended last week’s National Conference on Volunteering and Service in NYC, co-organized by the Points of Light Institute (POLI; run by the Hands-On Network, not to be confused with the former Points of Light Foundation) and the Corporation for National Service (CNS). I was appalled every time the organizers and speakers said that by attending this conference, we attendees were demonstrating support for national service. While the thousands of us who attended represented communities across the nation, we do not all support nationalized service and volunteering.
While I believe in volunteering and hope that high quality community engagement takes place nation-wide, I cannot support the current national programs for reasons that Rick Cohen carefully lays out. People from non-POLI, non-Hands-On Network, non-CNS-funded programs were frustrated by a naive, "one-size-fits-all" approach to volunteerism and neighborhoods, attending overflowing sessions on the outskirts of the conference to improve our programs. Handouts and mentions of setting standards were around, but few mainstream sessions (except for pre-conference AVMI) aspired to set high standards and to strive for greater engagement.
The prevailing attitude, like the rest of the nonprofit sector, was to try to engage more volunteers using fewer resources, even though volunteer programs have been anemically operating with compromised capacity for more than a decade. (No wonder 40% of volunteers quit!) So despite this being a national conference on volunteering, I (and many were) left feeling like the nonprofit sector represented by POLI, Hands-On, and CNS has embarrassingly low standards for volunteer programs and community impact and believes that the Serve America Act is wonderful. Not!
Thank you for such an interesting comment. I skipped this year’s conference after being so disappointed/frustrated with last year’s. I agree that it feels as if the "leaders" are assigning all kinds of meaning and messages to volunteerism that are out of sync with reality. The conference has become a mutual self-congratulation among just a few models with relatively speaking recruit and deploy a tiny percentage of America’s volunteers.
Just one more rant: rather than just assuming everyone is agreement on volunteerism (which we aren’t), such conferences should highlight different points of view, debates, and so forth. Doing so would strengthen everyone’s thinking.
I recently received a B.A. in Human Services Studies with minors in Poverty & Social Justice Studies as well as Leadership Studies. This article pinpoints many of my feelings regarding our country’s exploitation of “volunteers” and engaging the average citizen in nonprofit work. I had a professor that, similar to the Detroit example, always said, you would not send an average citizen to Doctors Without Boarders to help people. They are trained professionals. And yet, this country believes that human service professions can be done by the average joe. But unfortunately, I have had to give up my morals and take a position with AmeriCorps VISTA because all the jobs I was trying to get were either VISTA positions or organizations cannot afford employees (I believe largely because the VISTA program, as well as other AmeriCorps programs have created a system where nonprofits have to rely on these types of “employees” because there is no funding federally). I believe that I can build capacity while “serving”, but I also have an education and extensive experience to back me up. Thanks for this article.