Marketing Initiatives and Campaigns to promote Volunteering - a ...

“An organised period of substantial engagement and contribution to the local,nation or world community, which is recognised and valued by society, and forwhich there is only minimal monetary compensation to participants.” (Stanley,2004)The major American volunteering programs (eg U.S. Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, U.S.A.Freedom Corps) are examples of the community service model. Americorps, for example,provides accommodation, a weekly stipend and an educational award in return for a yearof full-time service.Stanley makes the point that since one of the defining features of volunteering is that it isunpaid,“it is therefore undermined by using the term to describe activities which are infact remunerated in some way. Using the term ‘volunteering’ to describeactivities that do not meet the unpaid criteria unhelpfully alienates parts of thevoluntary and volunteering sectors and should be avoided.”Cultural valuesThis distinction between volunteering and community service is of particular significancein determining the best means of promoting volunteering in Australia, since Australianvolunteers have not traditionally been remunerated for their efforts. It remains a mootpoint whether the majority of Australians are influenced more by British or Americancultural values at the beginning of the 21 st century. However, to adopt the Americanmodel of remunerated community service and promote it as ‘volunteering’ without dueregard to Australian attitudes towards volunteering could have unexpected, possiblyunwelcome, outcomes in the Australian context.It has also been suggested that other significant social and cultural differences betweenthe United States and Britain have contributed to differences in attitude towards theconcept of volunteering, for example:‣ a far higher rate of participation in organised religion in the United States than inthe United Kingdom, with an inevitable impact on shared values;‣ the experience in Britain of more than fifty years of the Welfare State, which hasgenerated in many people a belief that the state bears responsibility for assistingthose in need.Tony Blair has been quoted as asking, presumably rhetorically: “What does it say aboutthe country we became in the late 20 th century that do-gooding became a term of abuse?”(http://society.guardian.co.uk/volunteering/story/0,8150,575326,00.html). Stanley pointsout that, in the UK, the concept and word ‘volunteering’ causes some groups to18