Musick, Marc A., and John Wilson. Volunteers: A Social Profile.
Friedman, Barry D.
Musick, Marc A., and John Wilson. Volunteers: A Social Profile.
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008. 663 pages. Cloth,
$39.95.
Sociologists Marc A. Musick and John Wilson explore a curiosity of
life in many countries: the practice of many members of society to
donate their labor, usually to charitable nonprofit organizations,
without expectation of remuneration or other tangible benefits. Theories
of market economics would assume such behavior to be indicative of
feeblemindedness or irrationality, but the ubiquitousness of
volunteerism requires inquiry into the philosophical, sociological, and
psychological bases for decisions to undertake demanding work for free.
The authors resourcefully delve into data from numerous surveys of
volunteers and non-volunteers in a sophisticated, productive effort to
identify characteristics that make people likely to volunteer and, once
they have done so, to persist in such activity. Identification of the
independent, causal variables has value beyond the satisfaction of
intellectual curiosity: If volunteer recruiters know what
characteristics make people more likely to be available for persistent
voluntary activity, then they can concentrate their recruitment efforts
on individuals who have these characteristics, thus enhancing the
recruiters' productivity and success. For example, a professionally
employed college graduate is more likely to volunteer than an unemployed
dropout for at least three compelling reasons: First, the professional
is far more apt to feel confident in his/her ability that would make
him/her successful in the volunteer job. Second, the professional is
more likely to have the resources (notably money, time, and a car) that
would facilitate accomplishment of the volunteer role. Lastly, the
professional is more likely to be asked to volunteer, insofar as he/she
has a greater chance of being present at a meeting or other gathering at
which a volunteer recruiter sizes up attendees as potentially useful
participants.
Whether a person is attracted to volunteerism by his/her
motivations that he/she seeks to satisfy or whether the motivations
develop or evolve as a consequence of the voluntary activity is a
puzzle. For example, the characteristic of empathy may motivate an
individual to offer his/her unpaid labor for a charitable purpose. On
the other hand, Musick and Wilson quote sociologist James A.
Vela-McConnell, who volunteered to help at a battered-women's
shelter because he wanted to meet new people, but the experience
cultivated his empathy. As he admits, "While I had originally
become involved in order to meet people, I soon became committed to
volunteering out of a sense of responsibility to the people I
served" (p. 71). Vera-McConnell's testimony is a sample of the
complex interaction among variables that complicate any effort to
discern why volunteers do what they do and why others decline to
volunteer or quickly abandon their short-lived volunteer careers.
"This points to a problem with asking people [about] their motives
for volunteering as if they preceded the volunteer act," the
authors observe. "The actual experience of volunteering often leads
to such radical changes in attitudes toward the activity that the
original goals are forgotten or the volunteer becomes unable to separate
his/her initial reasons for volunteering from the reasons that make
sense to him/her now" (p. 71).
Musick and Wilson's findings go beyond the usual simplistic conjecture that volunteers volunteer because they aspire to satisfy
private goals, such as obtaining experience that they can use to upgrade
their resumes or because they would like to have some authority and
prestige that are lacking in their gainful employment. But Musick and
Wilson, while not disputing the existence of self-serving motivations in
many volunteers, still portray a large population of volunteers whose
volunteer behavior is reinforced by little more than a smile from a
grateful client and the knowledge that the human family has been made
incrementally better off. The authors report that volunteers are less
likely to quit because of frustration with their volunteer jobs or
burnout, and much more likely to be drawn away from volunteering by
family and work obligations, illness, and relocation.
This reviewer was surprised to find only a very brief discussion
about friction between volunteers and the paid-staff members who are
assigned to supervise the volunteers' work. My own bitter volunteer
experience with the American Red Cross (ARC), which I chronicled in my
1997 paper, "Cracking Down on Red Cross Volunteers,'"
convinced me that volunteers are routinely recruited by self-serving
volunteer managers, directed to do their volunteer work in accordance
with the managers' authoritarian preferences, and discouraged or
driven away when they press for the opportunity to participate in
decision-making about matters pertaining to their own volunteer work.
When two of my fellow volunteers in the ARC's Northeast Georgia
Chapter offered the advice to two board members that the chapter
leadership's heavy-handed management would deplete the
chapter's volunteer workforce, the board members replied
contemptuously and callously, "There will always be
volunteers" (quoted in my paper). My analysis was incited by the
literature of political science that celebrates voluntary associations
as, in Alexis de Tocqueville's conception, "training grounds
for democracy" (Democracy in America, 1840) and the proclamations
of charitable organizations, including the ARC, which claim that
volunteers are the organization's essential backbone whose skills
and intellect need to be treated with as much respect as those of the
paid professionals. These are promises that prove, in reality, to be
empty.
Musick and Wilson quickly extinguish the squabble about whether the
employees are depriving volunteers of their right to participate in
decision-making when they sort out the arguments this way:
"Non-profits try to solve this problem by clearly stating the
adjunct role of the volunteer in relation to the paid staff so that
there is no confusion over who is in control" (p. 437). Given my
experience, all I can say is: Now they tell me!
The authors' revelation about the status of volunteers as
interchangeable parts places their analysis in accord with what all of
us have long known about the emerging status of employees in the modern
private corporate sector. Just as the relationship between corporate
employers and their employees, once commonly life-long, has become a
mutually opportunistic and short-term arrangement, a volunteer's
connection to a nonprofit organization is now presumed to be ad hoc as
well, lasting only until the interests of the paid managers and the
volunteers diverge. The new relationship that Musick and Wilson describe
is, arguably, a rational and orderly one--as long as the volunteers
really are clued in from the start that the nonprofit organizations and
their paid recruiters who are soliciting prospective volunteers'
unpaid labor do not subscribe to the principle that enduring loyalty
ought to be part of this superficial, emotionally hollow bargain.
Barry D. Friedman, Ph.D.
Professor of Political Science
North Georgia College & State University
Dahlonega, Georgia
NOTE
(1) Barry D. Friedman, "Cracking Down on Red Cross Volunteers:
How American Red Cross Officials Crushed an Insurrection by Agitated,
Mistreated Volunteers in Northeast Georgia," paper presented at the
annual meeting of the Georgia Political Science Association, February
21, 1997; reprinted at http://www.NGCSU.edu/bdf/Studies/REDXcd.htm.