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STRATEGY #3 — Raising Help
In the short-term, volunteers can do more to assist with rudimentary tasks, such as park clean-ups, where staff
numbers have been reduced. However, there are various skill, managerial, and legal barriers to attempting to
replace paid staff with volunteers, what can termed “supplanting volunteering.” It is also the case that volunteers
cost money to recruit, train, and manage. If cuts are being made, volunteer management is an area that will
require at least some resourcing — the danger being that you otherwise end up with even fewer volunteers and
not more.
In the long term, the report highlights the potential advantages that volunteers offer over and above the things
that paid staff can do. This can be termed “supplementary volunteering.” For example, volunteers can:
• Bring local knowledge to bear as asset users and people who know other users.
• Increase an asset’s community and civic connections (useful for raising awareness around the assets, raising
funds, and increasing a community and city’s sense of ownership over assets). Again this has the byproduct
of creating or strengthening social ties.
All places are not created equal
How your area responds will depend, in large part, upon its politics, specifically the views that people hold
around the rightful roles of government and civil society. None of the case study cities saw all provision of
community and civic assets being just done by government or just by non-government actors — it was always
a mix.
Your area’s response will also depend upon capacity, not least money, time, and access to people with these.
Also important in terms of capacity is the strength of local economies, local democracy, and the local charitable
foundation scene. All of these factors will vary from place to place. Using taxes to fund assets will be especially
difficult in cities facing public spending cuts. In areas that have seen high out-migration, the “ask” of volunteers
is likely to be especially great owing to fewer potential volunteers, a lower tax base, and the same workload.
In such instances, resources from outside the city and state — whether from government, foundations, or
individuals — become especially important.
Summaries | 4