Volunteering doesn’t come for free
“Volunteering doesn’t come for free” is one of my favourite paradoxes: a volunteer is someone who does a task without expectation of payment, so how can a volunteer not be free?
To answer this question we have to get to grips with something which psychologists call social capital.
Just as with financial capital, social capital has to be accrued before it can be spent. For my purposes here, what I mean by social capital is the power that one person or organisation has to motivate someone to do something for them (earning favours). With financial capital, that power would be derived from money. As an individual or a company, money is an asset that I can use to pay for services or goods, or even for someone to work for me. With social capital, I may be able to get someone to provide service or do some work for me, but this is because they want to do it, not because they’re being paid to do it.
The public and private sectors can get very excited about volunteering and social capital, but it is often a little bit of a mystery to them: why is it that people will do something when they are not being paid? And it is this lack of understanding that often causes a problem. Because if you do not know why someone does something, whether a task or providing a service, outside of being paid for it, then you do not know how to motivate this kind of activity. You just assume there are people out there in the community who are waiting to give away their time and effort for free.
“Giving something back”
The call to volunteering can often be framed as inviting people to “give something back”. But the answer to the question of why people volunteer is embedded in that phrase itself. They’re returning and giving to something from which they have received. They are giving back, not giving forward. They are not giving in an unconnected way; it is reciprocation.
Thus, social capital is generated by communities that serve one another, and the fundamental building block of such communities is family. Family speaks of a deep relationship and a commitment to giving time, whether we like the individuals concerned or not. This is exemplified over festival periods, and certainly during Christmas, which may be one of the few times we get together over the whole year. There will be tensions, as well as celebration and good times.
So, one may ask, why do you come together with your family at festival times if you’re really not all that keen on the people? The answer is somewhat circular: we come together because we are family. Our commitment goes beyond easy preference. There is something within us that makes us instinctively realise that we have to spend time and make the best of being with one another. Just as building financial capital can be hard and a drudge, so it is with family. Building social capital is not always fun, but there is commitment.
A bridge that bears weight
I was reflecting recently that when I am faced with a DIY task, or a practical need to move some furniture, I most often would turn to family, or those friends I’ve known for 20 or 30 years, rather than those with whom I have been spending time more recently. With those long-term friends and family I don’t have to create some kind of social “bargain” because they know I will be there for them and they will be there for me. Of course, if there is no investment in the social bonds between us then we will lose contact and I will no longer be able to call upon them as friends. What we see, then, is different levels of community: there is family (blood relations), long-term friendships, and emerging friendships, and there are different degrees of social capital available with each relationship.
In this sense, a relationship is like a bridge, and that bridge is tested by the different amounts of weight it will carry. Some bridges can only take pedestrians and bicycles, and some can take trains and lorries. Within our anaology, this “weight” might be the different pressures of life: some relationships can be called upon in extreme crisis, whereas others may only bear minor challenges – such as borrowing some jump leads to get the car going. This interplay of relationships demonstrates the complexities of community. The nuanced mixture of serving and obligation, of like and dislike, is more like an organism than an institution, as it changes and develops all the time. This is this kind of community which generates volunteering.
A new bank on the high street with a shiny façade, enticing coffee bar and soft seats doesn’t compel those around to want to serve the welfare of the bank by doing some unpaid time processing cheques. However, a church with a food bank, or a gurdwara with a langar, often has people present who want to give something back, who may well volunteer and serve food without payment. There is a relationship there between the individual and the community ‘organism’ which means there is a desire to give back, and, although the individuals may not be giving back to other individuals that specifically served them, the understanding is they are serving and supporting the community.
The need for infrastructure: a hidden cost
Thus, “volunteering doesn’t come for free”, but it may not cost money! There is a cost of commitment, serving and time which goes into making a community from which volunteering can come. And if the volunteering is to be expressed beyond the confines of a particular group (e.g. a faith group serving beyond itself), there may need to be organisational infrastructure to support it, and this infrastructure may indeed have costs in the short term, so that volunteers can be recruited, envisioned and deployed.
In other words, if more volunteers are needed (or more hands needed on washing up after Christmas lunch!), the person directing the activity will need to be released from the task itself in order to recruit. Given that those coordinating and directing volunteers rarely have ample spare time for this, resources and money will have to be released to enable it. Some people are fortunate enough to have income that does not rely on their labour (unearned income) via investments, or potentially the income of a partner. In such cases their labour can be made available without payment, but this is an increasingly rare occurrence. What time workers have available to volunteer is often squeezed to the edges of their life – such as evenings and weekends – thus the role of coordinators in communities is all the more important to ensure volunteers are deployed efficiently.
Social care: the “sharp edge” of volunteering
Unpaid service, or volunteering, has been very much on my mind as I have been reading an article on the issues relating to social care in the UK. Behind every headline about pressure on the NHS is the (often un-spoken) reality of a social care system struggling under the pressure of its own duties, let alone relieving the NHS of social care needs which take up its resources.
Because the system is so broken there are many people not receiving the vital social care they need. Their quality of life is reduced, and inevitably costs spiral as what could and should be dealt with outside of hospital tracks into A & E departments.
Then there is the issue of unpaid carers upon which, in the end, the system relies. The lack of support to such carers, whether financial or in other ways, is a failing in western society.
By ‘the system’, here, I have meant the health and social care system. But, actually, much of the problem is to do with society itself, and how we care for those who are older and frail.
I am fortunate to be part of a strong family and a vibrant faith community, which gives me and my immediate loved ones a significant reservoir of resilience in the midst of the very real social care needs that my family faces on a daily basis. One of the greatest challenges for us is the question of to what degree our immediate family and our community of friends should cover these needs, and to what degree we need to seek outside help from professional care agencies. This is a challenge that many people face. But I believe the sad part is that there are many people that do not face this challenge in the same way, because they do not have family or a faith community who are available to share some of the burden.
I found it interesting a few months ago to read about a scheme that has been taking off between isolated older people and young people seeking accommodation, where both parties have come together for support. The older person, living in a house with spare rooms, is asset rich in this sense, whereas the younger person has intangible, or skill-based, assets that they can deploy to help their host. This seems like the beginnings of community – maybe even a Modern Family unit.
Different shapes of volunteering
Unpaid caring and volunteering of this sort is really the sharp end of volunteering. But for our society to function effectively we need volunteers to take up scrutiny and governance roles, too. In Healthwatch (the Barking and Dagenham branch of Healthwatch sits within my team) we are constantly looking for ways to “re-package” volunteering roles. We have a number volunteers on our board overseeing the work of Healthwatch, and their insights, freshness of inquiry and probing questions are key to making sure Healthwatch remains responsive to the surrounding community.
Other volunteers form part of our enter and view teams, going into health and social care settings to assess the user journey. The insights of these volunteers, and the way they view things, adds colour to what our staff members see. Volunteers in these roles can even be less distracted than paid members of staff who have multiple responsibilities upon them. A volunteer has already given their time for a particular purpose, and is often focused simply on the task, or person, in front of them.
But even with Healthwatch, the vast majority of our volunteers have come through some form of relationship, and are part of a relational community, even if this community may be weaker and fuzzier at the edges. Because, after all, my commitment is not to a faceless “organisation”, like Healthwatch; it is to people. It is to the people I serve, and the collective community, that I feel connected.
So, as we look at the issues relating to volunteering and carers, maybe we also need to look at how we (me and you) invest in community and family, both individually, with my immediate family, and in the wider community. Money is important, but time, service, longevity and commitment are priceless.
