A Look at America’s Newest Generation of Volunteers

A college student in her early 20s receives a “cause” invitation on Facebook. It is from the “Seeds for Change” group, one of the university’s community service chapters. She reads the evite to find the group is encouraging students to plant trees on Earth Day on an area of campus called West Green. The evite indicates nine of her friends are already attending the event. They have written their comments on the “wall,” “Be there after my Econ final,” and “I did this last year-wouldn’t miss it!” In one hand, the student gets out her cell phone and texts one of her roommates, in the other, she jumps on Twitter and tweets, “Signed up to plant trees on April 22. Anyone else want to join me in going green this Earth Day?”
Ladies and gentlemen, introducing the newest generation of volunteers.
This fresh army of do-gooders is demanding to know what they can do, what the impact will be, and, most importantly, they want to start now. Not a week from now. Not next month. Now. They’re a growing bunch of go-getters and they are growing fast. A recent study, Volunteering in America 2009, conducted by the Corporation for National and Community Service found the number of young adult volunteers, ages 16-24, rose from 7.8 million in 2007 to 8.2 million in 2008. There are a variety of explanations as to why this increase of young volunteers is now taking place, but none more important than the most critical piece in this puzzle: technology. Today’s youth thrives on social networking. They blog, vlog, tweet, text, g-chat, post status updates on their Facebook, share photos on Flickr, upload videos on YouTube, and on and on. In their day-to-day lives, they are on their PCs and Macs constantly.
The good news is that charities and nonprofits in search of these young American volunteers have caught onto this trend. A survey released in the Journal of Volunteer Administration stated the nonprofit survey respondents said the Internet has become second to word-of-mouth as the most useful recruiting strategy. Noticing that the younger population is frequently on the Web, organizations in need of volunteer help began examining the demographics of this age group. Through research, they found that young people are interested in “episodic” and short-term volunteer opportunities that will fit their school and work schedules. They also want to get as much information as they can about that particular volunteer opportunity.  Beyond the who, what, where, when and why, these new recruits want to know what their role will be as the volunteer, what different kinds of opportunities which are available, and see what others have said about their volunteer experience.
In order to be as informative and flexible as possible, charitable organizations have had to be creative. The latest phenomenon is online volunteering, which is extremely popular among the younger generation. If they have a scheduling conflict or do not have the time to be physically present at the volunteer site, they can help out an organization in need by designing a database, conducting research, or writing an article or blog to promote the organization’s cause and mission.
For example, once President Obama came to office in January, he issued a nationwide call to service and encouraged Americans to visit serve.gov. On this Web site, organizations can post their opportunities, people can easily sign up, learn more about the volunteer position, and they can use the site as a social networking platform to garner more support. This site has become the go-to place for Americans looking to pitch in and give back to their local community.
Today’s typical young volunteer may seem somewhat alien to those above the age of 40 who think of volunteering in a more basic and traditional sense. In the past, an individual may have heard from a friend about a local soup kitchen looking for volunteers to serve meals to the homeless on a Saturday afternoon. From there, this person would arrive at the church on Saturday afternoon, serve meals, and show up the following Saturday to serve more meals. No tweeting was involved.
How young people go about making a difference in today’s world is indeed different, however, let us never lose sight of the fact the motives of the volunteers today and the motives of the volunteers of yesteryear are NOT different. Both generations, young and old, do what they do because it makes them feel good. It feels good to help out your fellowman. It feels good to give back. It feels good to know you did something good today.
Mark my words. Technology will change, but the passion of our nation’s volunteers is ageless. It is one of the few things that will forever remain the same.
Enid Borden is president and CEO of Meals On Wheels Association of America.

Sonoma’s hip to the social networking groove

Jody Purdom | Sonoma Valley Sun

Closer to home, social networking is just beginning to change the face of volunteerism in the Valley. Fran Meininger, the Sonoma Valley Education Foundation’s executive director, has worked with local social networking guru Chip Roberson, of WiredSonoma, to facilitate and streamline news, events and contributions to the foundation.
Using an email-based social networking tool called Constant Contact as well as Facebook, Meininger keeps members informed of all that goes on with the education foundation. One example, for this summer’s “Hit the Road Jack” footrace, Meininger used the online Google Docs application to organize and keep volunteers and staff abreast of developments.
Meininger says it’s the best, most efficient use of resources and one that is used to easily manage a networking group of more than 4,000 potential supporters.
Roberson is the co-founder of WiredSonoma and has worked fervently to bring the benefits of social networking to Sonoma. He became hooked on the trend while working on the Obama campaign and he’s never looked back. His newest venture is called ClickMarkets, which aims to connect community – any community – through the social Web.
“Nonprofits can harness the power of social media for both internal and external relationship management,” said Roberson. “What’s also nice is that, through ClickMarkets, we are able to hire local talent from the WiredSonoma pool for some of our contract work. Hopefully, going forward, we’ll see more utilization of social media and online collaboration tools by our local community organizations.”
Lilla Weinberger feels the same way. In addition to owning Readers’ books, she’s a founding member of Organizing for America Sonoma Valley and Sonoma Valley Community Action Network before that. Organizing for America describes itself as a “big tent organization that facilitates individuals coming together to promote community engagement,” the group’s best ally … social networking.
Weinberger relies on e-mail blasts and network posts to get the word out about a multitude of events and community happenings. The latest – the recent International Day of Climate Action which featured three separate environmentally conscious community activities with much of the volunteer power coordinator through social networking. “Through three separate events, local organizers recognize the synergy of multiple efforts aimed at caring for our environment,” said Weinberger. “Social networking is the best way for us to reach a mass of people and bring our community together for the greater good.”