February 6, 2003 | Read Time: 1 minute
Making the Most of Volunteers, by Jean Baldwin Grossman and Kathryn Furano, offers advice on the most efficient use of volunteers by drawing on a study of hundreds of programs that use volunteers heavily, conducted by Public/Private Ventures, a Philadelphia nonprofit organization that works to improve the effectiveness of social policies and programs. Jean Baldwin Grossman, senior vice president of the organization’s research department, and Kathryn Furano, former director of policy and program development at the organization’s Oakland, Calif., office, write that 90 million Americans volunteer 20 billion hours of their time to charity annually. For nonprofit organizations to gain the maximum benefits of donated services, according to the authors, charity staff members need to increase the amount of attention they give to screening, training, and managing volunteers. It is important, Ms. Grossman and Ms. Furano say, to train volunteers in how to perform their tasks—for example, how to develop a mentor relationship with a teenager—and to provide them with information on logistics, such as whom to contact in case of an emergency. The report also illustrates the importance of providing supervision to volunteers, citing a study showing that volunteers who serve as mentors miss fewer meetings with their charges and have more successful relationships when they have regular contact with a charity’s staff members. The report concludes with a brief discussion of the costs of volunteer programs, including one estimate that a charity can expect to spend $300 per year per volunteer to provide appropriate training and support.
Publisher: Public/Private Ventures, 2000 Market Street, Suite 600, Philadelphia, Pa. 19103; (215) 557-4400; fax (215) 557-4469; http://www.ppv.org; 18 pages; $5; free for download on Web site.
