Paying Back With Interest

Some charities turn clients into eager volunteers

When Doreen Wohl came to work one winter afternoon, she had 25 people to feed, almost 1,000 pounds of groceries to move, and no coworkers to assist her.

Ms. Wohl, executive director of the West Side Campaign Against Hunger, in New York, was in a bind.

“I hate the line outside on the street — you know, the old soup kitchen line,” she recalls. “I think it’s insulting to people, so I always insist we open up promptly.”

Since waiting for her coworker to show up was not an option, Ms. Wohl decided to ask for assistance from the men and women waiting to receive their food. “I walked up the stairs and I said to people, ‘I’m by myself today, and I’m going to need some help,’” she says.

What happened next on that afternoon a decade ago drastically changed the food pantry’s volunteering system. “The line of people came alive,” she says. “People were eager to help and had good skills. They became people with names and abilities rather than a line of passive and anonymous faces.”

Now, the pantry operates as a cooperative supermarket with 40 to 50 regular clients who volunteer. No one is required to work to receive food, although Ms. Wohl will still informally invite people to help when she’s short-handed. Usually, the customers need no prompting.

“People feel involved, they have a good time helping out, and they ask if they can come back and do it again,” says Ms. Wohl.

Gaining Self-Esteem

Although no one keeps statistics on how many nonprofit groups enlist their clients as volunteers, the practice appears to be widespread. Some charities, such as Ms. Wohl’s, use current clients as volunteers. Other organizations, such as rape centers and domestic-violence shelters, allow only former clients to volunteer, to ensure that they can withstand potentially stressful volunteering situations.

For clients, volunteering can increase their self-esteem, help them build a community of colleagues, give them job skills, and help get them ready to find paid employment, say nonprofit managers and clients who volunteer. Charities also benefit: Getting clients to volunteer can help reduce the time needed to recruit and screen helpers, because organizations are usually already familiar with the background and personalities of their clients. In addition, clients may have a strong emotional investment in the charity’s mission, which makes them dedicated to the organization. What’s more, clients of social-service charities may feel more comfortable relating to people who have themselves endured homelessness, hunger, addiction, or incarceration than to other volunteers.

Susan Ellis, president of Energize, a consulting group in Philadelphia that specializes in managing volunteers, says that while she is generally in favor of clients’ becoming involved as volunteers, managers of volunteers need to make sure that clients do not feel coerced to help a nonprofit organization.

If the managers aren’t careful, she says, a client might think, “They’re going to end up not giving me service if I don’t help.” She adds that clients may feel resentful if their peers are chosen to volunteer and they are not. To avoid such problems, she says, charities need to have solid management policies in place.

“The idea of knowing what each person has been asked to do, having a job description, having an application process, orienting people, that kind of thing, is a very important component of a successful volunteer program,” she says.

Empathy and Experience

Jacquelyn L. Lendsey is chief executive officer of Women in Community Service, a national group with headquarters in Alexandria, Va., that works to reduce the number of women and youth living in poverty by promoting economic independence. She says efforts to get clients of social-service groups to help each other can be very effective. “We believe strongly that women learn from women,” she says. “In our women’s programs, many of the volunteers are there specifically because they want to share the experiences they’ve had.”

Seven years ago, Connie Ellis enrolled in the Women in Community Service program after spending six months in prison for trying to obtain pain killers with a forged prescription. Now, Ms. Ellis works as a vocational-education life-skills counselor at Harbor House, a drug- and alcohol-treatment facility in Memphis. She also volunteers to teach one or two classes a month at Women in Community Service’s Memphis affiliate and says her experiences help her show others that they can overcome their own obstacles.

“It’s amazing how the human spirit can be shattered through certain events that occur in someone’s life,” Ms. Ellis says. “And I remember how hopeless the women were when I was in jail. I wanted to encourage that hope to resurface. And that’s what I hopefully do through volunteering.”

Ms. Lendsey says that the volunteers often share their own struggles as they assist clients: “They say, ‘I can talk to you on the phone, if you’re having a moment where there’s doubt. Or I can share and join you in the fact that you’ve found housing, or celebrate the fact that you’re back with your children. I can share with you my experience with my own children as I got back into the community as they came back to live with me, and what that meant in terms of child care and in terms of child development.’”

Matt Smith, who completed a Job Corps program in St. Paul in 1990, says that volunteering helps him as much as it helps the program’s participants. Job Corps is a residential employment-training program for men and women 16 to 24 years old, and Women in Community Service provides support and job referrals to Job Corps students.

Mr. Smith gives up to 10 hours a week to the Hubert H. Humphrey Job Corps Center, in St. Paul, talking to Job Corps students about their problems, and providing transportation if they move to a new home or need to find a job.

“It gives me a sense of self-worth, that somebody asks for help and then somebody like me can show up and say, ‘OK, what do you need, what do you want?’” he says.

He adds that volunteering has helped keep his own life on track. “By helping other people, I learn about problems that I can stay away from,” he says. “I’m not an alcoholic and I am not a drug abuser. Why? Because I have helped people who are, so I see what they’re going through and I know very well that I don’t want to travel down the same path.”

Recruiting Clients

For some nonprofit groups, such as Women in Community Service, recruiting clients to volunteer is considered a natural result of a client’s progress. But other organizations often find ways to enlist former clients to help. In many cases, clients develop a close relationship with staff members or others at an organization and returning to volunteer is a way to continue these relationships.

Phyllis Newland, the late founder of the Learning Place, in Syracuse, N.Y., which offers literacy and math tutoring to adults and children, wanted students to have “a place where the coffeepot was on, where they were greeted when they walked in, where they were welcomed,” says Linda Green, the charity’s director of programs and operations. Ms. Green says the friendly atmosphere keeps clients coming back after their classes to put up holiday decorations, sweep floors, or tutor other students. “They know the people, and they have friends here,” she says.

It’s also important for nonprofit organizations to make volunteering demonstrably fulfilling, if not fun. Connie Ellis says that the attitudes of staff and volunteers at Women in Community Service made her want to join their ranks. “One of the biggest strong points for me continuing with WICS is the passion that the staff shows — it’s contagious,” she says. “If you have a passionate staff that is dedicated and committed, then I believe that the volunteers will follow.”

Additionally, say charity managers, staff members should show special appreciation to clients who volunteer. At the West Side Campaign Against Hunger, a Volunteer Recognition Day is held annually where customer volunteers receive stipends ranging from $100 to $500. During the year, the West Side Campaign includes volunteers in such activities as a visit to the Roxbury Organic Farm or a sail on the Hudson River on the Clearwater Environmental Education Schooner.

The group also holds personal celebrations. “We make a big fuss over birthdays and graduations,” Ms. Wohl says. “Saying ‘thank you’ is enormously important.”

But the most effective and easy way for charities to recruit their clients, she says, is simply to ask for help. Even if clients want to volunteer, they may not step up unless they are invited.

“It is very simple,” says Ms. Wohl. “When we need help, we go to the customers who are waiting and ask for two or three volunteers to help restock shelves, or break down and tie up boxes. People always volunteer.”

Potential Problems

Like any other volunteers, some clients can cause problems for the nonprofit organizations they endeavor to help. Often difficulties are small and easily remedied by a little extra attention, according to nonprofit managers.

Because of the mission of the Learning Place, for example, clients working in the office may have trouble with written communication. “One volunteer we had was a student and she came to us at a second-grade reading level,” says Ms. Green. “She worked with her tutor, and she got up to a sixth-grade level when she stopped. She wanted to give back, so our director started working with her and showed her how to answer the phones and take messages. But she had trouble with writing and spelling. I could usually make out who she was talking about on phone messages, but sometimes it was tough.”

Ms. Green adds, however, that she doesn’t mind less-than-perfect phone messages, as long as the volunteer cares about the work. “If I had a choice between working with one of our students and maybe getting a secretary that’s more experienced but really doesn’t care as much about the organization,” she says. “I’d rather have one of our students, because the students really care about us.”

But larger organizations cannot always maintain that familial closeness. Charities sometimes have a false sense of security when using former clients, which can backfire.

Miriam Leslie, who oversees volunteers at the Christmas Bureau of Edmonton, in Alberta, Canada, says at least one client who volunteered caused the charity to lose a potential donation. The bureau provides food hampers and food vouchers to families for Christmas dinner. Recipients of the charity’s aid often volunteer to help raise money, but aren’t always interviewed extensively beforehand. Volunteers collect donations from people in shopping malls, working partially unsupervised shifts.

Mrs. Leslie says the charity is now looking for ways to avoid the hazards of underserved volunteers. For instance, it has set up a database, in which past volunteers can be evaluated and tracked. Mrs. Leslie also suggests that charity managers conduct up to two interviews to feel out a potential helper.

Risks for Clients

In addition to concerns about how good a job clients do, some charity officials also worry that volunteers can also harm themselves when they take on a role that is emotionally intense. That’s why many rape and domestic-violence crisis centers establish a waiting period before any client may volunteer.

Elizabeth Hummer, volunteer-services director at SafePlace Austin, in Texas, a domestic-violence and sexual-assault survival center says that each year five to 10 of her group’s clients express interest in volunteering for SafePlace.

Since she started in her job four years ago, she says, the charity has required that clients wait six months before they can begin training to serve as volunteers. “We realized that people want to volunteer because they’re grateful, or perhaps they want to do some prevention, but what we were encountering is that people who are current clients can be traumatized by going though volunteer training,” Ms. Hummer says.

The policy, she says, is in keeping with her group’s mission of helping people who have undergone domestic violence and sexual assault. “When they’re clients, they need to focus on themselves,” she says. “When they’re volunteers, that focus has to be on the people we’re serving. And that’s where the problem was. We had people who were triggered by stories they were hearing, and it was causing a problem in their recovery.”

Ms. Hummer says that staff members need to make prospective clients aware of the nature of volunteering. “I would advise nonprofit organizations that may be concerned about potential emotional trauma to tell the prospective volunteer that he or she might experience some feelings they didn’t expect,” she says. “If you can’t do this work without reliving or talking about your situation, then you’re not ready to do this.”

But Ms. Hummer offers a middle ground for people who aren’t ready to serve as volunteers: Clients are invited to come in and share their stories during volunteer training. Ms. Hummer says that helps former clients show their gratitude for the help they received at SafePlace and helps give volunteers more exposure to the realities of dealing with people who have been raped or otherwise physically abused.

In fact, most charity officials say they are unwilling to absolutely turn down any client who wants to help. Mrs. Leslie says that even if some of her volunteers aren’t helpful at soliciting donations, she can still use them at the Christmas Bureau.

“I always try to find a place where somebody can fit in,” she says. “Even if you need to find a behind-the-scenes activity, if the volunteer feels that they’re still making a valuable contribution to your organization, that makes a huge difference.”