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Theme 12 — Volunteering with assets requires a support infrastructure
Several city councils have introduced infrastructure to encourage voluntarism. The city of Baltimore’s stepUP
program recruits volunteers to supplement the work of city staff. The most relevant element of the program,
Power in Dirt, encourages community groups and organizations to tend or even buy city-owned land (this most
often involves vacant lots with potential as smaller community gardens and spaces). Another example is the city
of Detroit’s Adopt-a-Park scheme in which over 100 of the city’s smaller neighborhood parks have agreed to take
on management of their respective parks’ upkeep, ranging from occasional clean-ups by local businesses and
residents to high-level maintenance and programming by an effective and committed non-profit.
Employment of senior professionals at the heart of local government is a key driver for voluntarism. In
Baltimore, for example, a chief service officer located in the Mayor’s Office liaises with other departments, for
example, with City Housing staff to ensure good online maps of available lots that residents may want to manage
or buy and with Public Works to ensure City water is available for lots that are adopted.
Some local volunteering recruitment and management initiatives have sought to use social networks or have
created such networks as a welcome by-product. Examples of using existing networks include neighborhood
football teams in Detroit that have a community service competition running alongside the city-wide
neighborhood football league. Examples of the latter include Baltimore’s Baby-Boomers and elderly, for whom
there are several programs that encourage volunteering. People get to meet new friends whilst also doing good
things for others.
Several excellent national models for encouraging volunteering have been adopted in the study cities. Baltimore’s
stepUP, mentioned above, was part of the national Cities of Service network that encourages volunteering in
city government service delivery. There are also several locally adopted national models that are of potential
interest, notably Business Volunteers Unlimited that matches managers with non-profit boards and Habitat
for Humanity’s CEO Build that gets CEO’s out into communities to build homes. The national model that is
perhaps most relevant to assets is the non-profit ToolBank, which, through several local affiliates, lends tools and
equipment to non-profit member groups, everything from drills to hoes.
Theme 13 — “Additionality” needs to remain a central concern for asset supporters
The key question for all giving to assets — whether of donations, grants, or volunteered time — is whether it
is increasing. If so, is this additional giving or is it just displacing giving from other good causes? The ideal
scenario, particularly in the context of public spending cuts, is for additional giving whereby members of
the public give more of their absolute disposable income, where there is more foundation grant money being
dispensed and when individuals devote more of their time for volunteering.
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