How do you get people to help? This photo tells you
Spotted in the window of a local charity shop a few years ago was this clever poster which captures the two main reasons why people volunteer:
People help both for what they get out of it (fun, learning a new skill, meeting others and so on) as well as what they know the cause gets out of it.
Appealing to both motivations is what gets the most help (as explained further in 101 Ways To Win An Election), especially when also combined with a sliding scale of commitment for people to move along.
…… Volunteers = Free Workers!
Sorry, call me cynical, BUT Charity Shops only want Vollys as FREE LABOUR , to keep costs down, and to pay the HIGH SALARIES of their Directors !!!
I agree with the above comments, I spent 17 years as a volunteer for various organisations and with most of them felt as if I was being treated as cheap labour. Politicians like David Cameron and Nick Clegg who were urging more people to volunteer pre-2010 have never done it themselves. There is far too much vital work carried out in the UK by volunteers (e.g. health & social care, nature conservation, school governors, local councillors, beach & countryside cleaning, medical research, even air ambulances for God’s sake!) – if it’s worth doing then it’s worth paying for!
Does James know neither of those people had ever volunteered? After all, all unpaid political activism is volunteering.
Yes, some organisations treat volunteers very badly. Others treat them very well. As far as I can see there is no connection between whether the volunteers are treated well and whether the organisation is a VCO or statutory, except that inevitably volunteers for statutory organisations have rather less influence on the policies of the organisation.
It’s plain impossible to pay for everything worth doing. Where the boundaries of voluntary work should lie is an awkward question, but practically, some jobs need people to be trained to a level where they must be paid and others – clearing scrub on a nature reserve, say, or volunteering behind the bar at a community pub – are enjoyable to many people as well as fairly simple.