Museums and volunteers

Question: If it was important, why did you assign to a volunteer?

Answer: Maybe you assigned it to the volunteer because it was important.

The relationship between non-profits and volunteers

Museums and non-profit organizations often rely on volunteers to advance their missions. Volunteers provide two distinct services. First, they provide labor, such as staffing information desks, cataloging objects, and leading tours, which allows museums to accomplish more tasks. Second, volunteers link institutions to their communities. They serve as ambassadors who promote the museum’s value and mission to audiences and potential visitors. The vast majority of museums and non-profits recognize the value their volunteers provide; however, within the relationship there is still a potential for miscommunication. How often have you heard staff complain that they have trouble “managing” their volunteers? The frustration can be palpable on both sides. The solution may lie in rethinking the institution/volunteer relationship through a paradigm of social vs economic transactions. Understanding the difference can provide new insight into these relationships.

In the last post, we talked about Dan Ariely’s book, Predictably Irrational, and described the difference between social and economic transactions. Under an economic norm, people perform work in return for economic benefit, and those engaged in social transactions seek emotional satisfaction. Unless a non-profit has no paid staff, volunteerism in many museums is a social transaction occurring in an economic context. Volunteers are not “free”. There is a cost associated with recruiting, training, and managing them, and a volunteer coordinator is usually a paid position. In theory, volunteers return more value to the museum in the services for which the museum would otherwise pay. Implicit in this relationship is a potential for miscommunication and conflict between paid staff members who, though mission-focused, apply economic norms to their work and volunteers who apply social norms. Operating under two different norms enhances potential for misunderstanding and conflict.

Example

“June” volunteered to chair an event at the elementary school. Her goal was to create a fun, social experience for the families. June, who works full time, was already an active PTA volunteer and knew that she would have to make personal sacrifices to plan the event. Imagine June's frustration was when four days before the event, following weeks of planning and meetings, the principal—who to that point had attended no meetings—insisted on a series of changes that had to be incorporated or she would cancel the event. Sacrificing sleep, June accommodated the changes. The day of the event, June arrived at school at 7 a.m. She organized materials, decorated the cafeteria, and set up activity stations. After the event and the parents on the clean up crew had left, the principal insisted that June re-wipe down tables and then returned to her office to wait until June finished. At 10 p.m. June headed for the door, vowing never to chair another PTA event again. June is still fuming six months later. She feels that the principal was treating her like an employee by first telling her to alter her the event and then to re-clean the cafeteria. More importantly, even though the PTA president, numerous parents, and several teachers thanked June for her efforts, the principal never said thank you. This informed June’s belief that the school leadership did not value her contributions and that future volunteer work was not worthwhile.

Why do volunteers do it?

Social norms are tied to individuals’ needs to build and maintain community. People volunteer to feel good about themselves. They look for opportunities to receive positive feedback and emotional nurturing. They resist formal evaluation because it is associated with economic norms. You are evaluated and disciplined at work, not in your personal life. People take offense when social and market norms come into conflict. Once a social norm collides with a market norm, the social norm evaporates and does not return for a long time, if ever. Anyone who has worked with or been a volunteer understands that the currency of volunteerism is a hearty thanks. If they perceive that their contributions are not valued at the same level at which they have assigned value, they are likely to end the association. In other words, if volunteers experience a thank you deficit, they will leave. As the preceding example demonstrates, they do not necessarily leave quietly. If they are angry enough, they will share their complaints widely, which may undermine the organization’s relationship with the remaining volunteers as well its community standing.

Think of yourself as Julie the Cruise Director: it is your job to make volunteering fun.

The question remains, if the task is really important do you assign it to a volunteer? The answer depends on the organization’s point of view regarding the role of volunteers and its ability to meet their social needs. Effort correlates to perceived value. Low value tasks receive low effort, and high value tasks receive high effort. Social transactions are high value tasks. According to Ariely’s research, volunteers who feel highly engaged in a social transaction perform at levels equal to or greater than paid employees. Consider the positions of arts organizations that recruit volunteers to chair annual galas to raise large portions of their operating budgets. If your organization can create and sustain an environment that keeps volunteerism firmly in the social realm, then by all means recruit volunteers and give them high value tasks. If your organization views volunteers as strictly replacement labor for eliminated jobs and sets joblike standards of performance or maintains a volunteer corps only because it’s the non-profit norm and assigns make work tasks, then reconsider whether the potential conflict between market and social norms is worth it.

The take away:

• Volunteers seek emotional satisfaction and will take offense if they think that they are being taken advantage of.
• High value tasks receive high effort. Low value tasks receive low effort.
• Meaningful and specific recognition is an important component of a social transaction.