The History of Volunteer Involvement in Seven Stages
Stage 5: More staff are hired and volunteers eventually become assistants to the paid workers. The
board of directors is still comprised of volunteers, but now they "govern" rather than "manage."
This is the longest stage to date, and the conversion of service provision by volunteers to service provision
by paid staff usually evolves slowly. Of course, there are examples of the opposite. Most urban AIDS organizations
watched themselves grow within a year or two from a dozen people in someone's living room to a staff of
hundreds in a multistory office building. Talk about culture shock!
The signs of what is generally called "professionalizing" an organization can be heard in remarks such as:
"We really ought to be concerned about confidentiality."
"Isn't it risky to allow volunteers to do this? Aren't we incurring liability?"
"Our clients deserve the most professional service possible."
It's not that such thoughts are wron`g, it's just that they are often misapplied to
volunteers out of ignorance and stereotypes. Regardless, frontline volunteers are slowly moved into peripheral
roles and board volunteers are asked to think only about policies and governance. No one asks: How do they
do this effectively if they are disengaged from the work of the organization?
Stage 6: The organization becomes an entrenched institution with all work of
importance done by employees. (Even possibly legislated into a government function.)
Of course the founding volunteers can claim success if their maverick vision ends up as an important community
service, having survived over the years. But there are dangers, too. For example, a paid-staff-only agency
can become more concerned with financial survival than with client service. Or it can become the very "Establishment"
that the current Lunatic Fringe is screaming about.
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