Watch an interview with IWF’s Ivy Staker and VA’s Andy Alvarez as they dive into the rich history of community contribution, how things have shifted over time, and what it means for volunteerism today.
What does it mean to be a volunteer? When you think of volunteering today, you probably conjure up images of organizations, of application forms, and criminal record checks. Maybe an iconic non-profit comes to mind, the Red Cross or the United Way. Perhaps you reflect back on that service trip you once took with your church as a kid, or your gap year spent volunteering abroad. Whatever you’re imagining, it’s likely it was formal, offered through a professional organization, and run through a series of checks and balances to ensure its safety and worthiness. These sorts of opportunities we recognize as volunteering today can be traced back to the advent of formal volunteer service programs in the mid-1800s.
Presently, and for at least the last 40 years, this type of volunteering has been the subject of a narrative of “crisis” and “decline.” Organizations that rely on the loyalty and commitment of volunteers are scared. The numbers are bleak. Volunteers are showing up less and less. Behind this crisis narrative lies an ideological system predicated on “altruistic purity” — an expectation that volunteers are driven by the needs of others rather than their own.
In exploring this narrative, we’ve turned to history to offer us a fresh perspective. What if human giving behaviour isn’t in crisis, but the ways we’ve crafted roles, practices, policies, and resource flows is what stands in the way?
The impulse to help one another, albeit in an informal, unorganized fashion may be at the very heart of what it means to be human. Historical and anthropological research indicates that informal volunteering is a cultural universal, an instinct common amongst all human beings, not a learned behavior present only in some cultures. Its origins can be traced back to our origins, some 150,000-200,000 years ago. Informal helping even predates the evolution of modern humans, with evolutionary biologists considering it an important aspect of humans’ evolution as social animals. It can be seen as a type of social capital as it helps establish the norms, networks and trust that allows for cooperation amongst groups of people, while social networks theory explains that individuals help others either because they expect something in return (direct reciprocity), or help members of a group, expecting that someone in the group will eventually return that favour (indirect reciprocity). Our ancestors were not necessarily acting altruistically.
This type of informal helping isn’t well documented historically, despite being woven so deeply into our early social fabric. As Dean (2011) writes:
The everyday behaviours of informal volunteering, which exist outside of the formal and organised activities of charities, have long played a role in the history and development of community life. But they are often sidelined in studies of voluntary action. This may be because informal volunteering cannot produce a cohesive narrative as formalised volunteering can, of campaigning and demonstrations, of innovation, and of institutional organisation.
There is little narrative to be gleaned from researching the history of mowing a neighbour’s garden, or helping a stranger carry goods, except perhaps anecdotally through the sociology of work and divisions of labour. Conceptualised in this way, to write the history of volunteering would be akin to writing the history of giving, or smiling, or holding, or any other basic human behaviour that most of us do most days. However, these behaviours play a role in more people’s lives than formal volunteering does (p.1-2).
Given the futility of trying to trace and date simple acts of helping as innocuous as holding or smiling, our best bet in seeking to understand how we’ve come to our current conceptualization of volunteerism is to start with the very first voluntary associations, the earliest iteration of a nonprofit organization and the genesis of formal volunteering.
The Power of Association & Affiliation
The defining factor of these associations is that membership was elective, not compulsory. There is some evidence of formal associations among hunter-gatherer societies, but it is generally accepted that they became more prevalent within more settled, horticultural societies. These groups were built on an ethos of reciprocity and mutuality, as opposed to one-way, self-sacrificial giving.
The association as a group has proved its utility and value in all societies over the past 10,000 years. Although their goals and purposes have changed and expanded, particularly since the Industrial Revolution in the early 1800s, the history of associations is one of positive impact as a latent resource that can be mobilized in times of need or crisis. While the forms of voluntary association have shifted and may continue to do so, there is little evidence to suggest that the impulse to form these types of groups is truly at risk.
Some of the earliest examples of associations we dug up, the Tsu, Hui, and She in China in 123 BCE, were organizations whose members provided essential services for one another including care for the elderly, education, burials, physical labour, crop maintenance and more.
In the Babylonian and Assyrian empires of Mesopotamia, artisan organizations brought together people in extended families that shared a common trade, while other associations were formed among slaves. Despite being formed around shared occupation, the predominant focus of the groups was not economic but social, including the care of widows of workers, as well as religious.
While not a formal association per se, an ethos of mutuality, interconnectedness, and reciprocity is at the basis of many cultures across the African continent. Perhaps most well known is the philosophy of “ubuntu.” Originating from the nguni languages of Southern Africa, ubuntu is translated to mean “I am because you are, you are because we are.” In this worldview, one understands that their own wellbeing is inextricably linked to that of their community. The spirit of ubuntu continues to influence social and political life across Africa today, serving as a foundation for collective decision making and social justice initiatives.
In Medieval Europe, the most common type of associations were mostly for men: fraternities and guilds. They provided a space for shared identity and belonging, and helped one build trust and community ties outside of kinship bonds. This created a vibrant socia leconomy of active self-help and mutual help, involving fundraising for churches, the maintenance of communal facilities, and the support of neighbors in distress. This is an early example of volunteering as a form of self-development, not selflessness.
A rare example of an early association for women, béguines were an intentional community of religious women, not entirely under Church control, that flourished in northern France and western Germany. Living together in a béguinage, members pursued a frugal life of prayer and chastity, combined with religious teaching and charitable action that included caring for the poor and ill and those on the margins such as lepers, as well as laying out and preparing the dead. These communities allowed women to spend some time engaging in meaningful, fulfilling activity, while remaining outside the marriage market. They seem to have acted as institutional support for women, offering companionship, mutual assistance, medical aid, and instruction, as well as relief in hard times. Despite some prosecution and accusations of heresy, the communities managed to survive the Reformation- there were more than 1,700 béguines in Belgium in the mid-1820s.
Religion, of course, has a deep seated relationship to the ministration of the poor and the sick, and it’s here where we see the seeds of the mentality of altruistic purity sown. While early examples of volunteerism are characterized by community-minded individuals participating in opportunities for mutual aid, religious organizations soon stepped in to take over the responsibilities that associations may have previously handled. In Medieval Europe, most “hospitals” were religious institutions, with monasteries setting up infirmaries for the ill and dying, run by monks and nuns with very little medical knowledge and founded around a principle of hospitality, they provided a space for rest and recuperation, more than healing, and an opportunity for religious volunteers to act out their moral duties.
In Canada, during the 18th century (and continuing to the 20th), care for the poor and sick primarily came from charitable organizations associated with the Roman Catholic Church. Across Quebec, volunteers from religious charities helped those struggling in many ways that look very similar to volunteer activities today: delivering food and firewood, running soup kitchens and depots for clothing, furniture and tools; visiting sick and disabled people in institutions and their homes, and helping the unemployed find jobs. Volunteers also provided support to widows and orphaned children following deadly epidemics, such as cholera in 1832 and 1849 and typhoid in 1847.
In pre-industrial Europe, as we’ve discussed, people provided for each other’s needs within local communities through traditional forms of mutual assistance, but these systems broke down as the industrialization and urbanization of the nineteenth century shifted norms and circumstances, making way for formal voluntary and mutual aid organizations. .
The Advent of Volunteerism As We Know It
The word “volunteer” has origins in the Hebrew word ‘nadav’ meaning to willingly give, it also has connotations of generosity and nobility, implying that people were expected to be altruistic, and that giving of one’s wealth represented the highest form of altruism. The verb came into popular use in 1755 as people rallied to support the Revolutionary War, the first major volunteer recruitment event in US history. As the country recruited soldiers to join the army, everyday civilians banded together to raise money and boycott British goods. Throughout the country, volunteerism evolved, beyond faith and the church, into patriotism. It offered a way for ordinary people to demonstrate their love of country while supporting war efforts.
In the mid-1800s, volunteerism began to explode, moving beyond religious causes into philanthropy and social reform. It was during this time that many of the organizational pillars of the North American non-profit world were established: the YMCA, the Salvation Army, the American Red Cross, and the United Way.
Between 1861 and 1865, women volunteered in the American Civil War, and emerged as key players in the creation of charitable organizations, as well as arts and cultural associations, and initiatives for social reform. An interesting tension emerged in this era, between the church’s mandate to help, and a more individualistic, moralizing approach to “scientific philanthropy.” In both the US and Canada, associations such as the Montreal Hygiene Committee, the Social Hygiene Council and the Moral and Social Reform Council sprang up with the intention of both solving problems, and addressing the worthiness of recipients.
The US Sanitary Commission is a great example of this tension and a harbinger of the professionalization of help that would come to characterize the 20th century non-profit scene. During the civil war, the sanitary commission was a privately funded national federation that assumed responsibility for public health and relief measures on the battlefield and in military encampments. Throughout the war, this commission was vehemently opposed by the U.S Christian Commission, an organization rooted in evangelism that valued individual spirituality and the relief of individual suffering over more utilitarian concerns of efficacy and efficiency. The Sanitary Commision was concerned with addressing issues, while the Christian Commission just wanted to help people. The former hired professionals and experts to provide services, while the latter recruited eager volunteers to carry out its mission.
This trend of efficiency and efficacy continued with the Charity Reform Movement of the late 1890s. In the early days of volunteerism, aid was offered indiscriminately to all those who seemed or claimed to need it, but this movement aimed to eliminate any claims for help by those whom people in positions of authority determined to be undeserving. Reformers of this time sought to ensure all applicants for poor relief were registered, aid was given only in exchange for work whenever possible, and all activities were overseen by an organizational member.
The start of World War I brought with it a flurry of volunteer activity. Now, as with previous wars, not only were soldiers volunteers, but so too were the ordinary citizens who stepped up to support their efforts, including a great deal of women whose contributions were previously confined to the sphere of home and family. A spirit of “community service” proliferated as people passionately and patriotically stepped up to support their countries in a time of crisis, and women were at least partially freed from some of the confines of Victorian rules of female conduct through their participation. In the US, women’s engagement in WWI war efforts was a major catalyst for (white) women’s suffrage, as democratic volunteer service was leveraged to secure voting rights for middle and upper class white women.
The Professionalization of Help
By the 1920s, both America and Canada were home to a vast network of voluntary organizations, but their reliance on volunteers began to decline, as institutions shifted toward hiring professional staff to run their operations. Likewise, between the 1930s and 1960s, the creation of the modern welfare state blurred the lines of responsibility for social wellbeing, shifting much of the onus of care from citizens and volunteer or charitable organizations, to government initiatives and agencies.
The 1960s also ushered in a new wave of activism for social and political causes, including the Civil Rights Movement, which drew on large groups of grassroots activists and often created new voluntary organizations. However, with their success, they followed in the path of earlier non-profits, focusing on professionalizing their staff in order to achieve and sustain their goals. As educational and employment opportunities increased, particularly for women, the available volunteer pool also diminished. At this time, and into the 70s, local volunteer bureaus and volunteer programs were established, particularly those aimed at youth, with the intent to discourage counter-culture behaviour. “Voluntourism” was also formalized during this period (although it would not have been referred to by that moniker which was coined in the 90s). The UN Volunteer Program began in 1968, specifically targeting college-age students and young adults, recruited to take part in a two-year volunteering program abroad with a humanitarian and peacekeeping framework. This has since evolved into the popular practice of taking a “gap year” to volunteer, generally arranged through an organization at a premium cost, and often criticized for being problematic and profit-driven.
In the 80s and 90s, the professionalization of the nonprofit sector continued, with the internal structures of charitable organizations continuing to more closely resemble those of for-profit corporations, and a strong focus on safety, performance, measurable outcomes, efficiency and strategy. In the mid-90s, Volunteer Canada, in partnership with the RCMP, developed a comprehensive volunteer screening process (a precursor to and resource for the National Sex Offender Registry) and in 1997, the Volunteer Protection Act was passed in the US.
It was in the early 90s as well, that chatter about a “crisis” in volunteering is thought to have begun, as interested parties grappled with the tension between individualism and altruism, with some believing the positions to be fundamentally at odds. As volunteering became a way to gain valuable experience, set oneself apart on a resume or college application, or even a way to make friends or travel, it called into question whether benefitting from a volunteer opportunity somehow taints that contribution, making it less “pure.”
As does this historic outline, theories of development in the nonprofit sector also outline a shift from informal person-to-person helping, towards more organized volunteering, correlating that shift with a society’s economic development and suggesting that informal helping flourishes in more traditional, less developed settings. Theorists also suggest that the progression from informal volunteering to state/government provided services, might be less common in the Global South, preserving and sustaining more informal types of community care and contribution, and explaining why immigrants to Canada are more likely to participate in informal volunteering, while native-born Canadians are more likely to formally volunteer.
How is This Relevant to Volunteer Organizations Today?
So, what can we learn from this look-back at volunteering’s deepest roots? Does it have any bearing on how we presently experience volunteerism?
It shows us that the spirit of contribution, cooperation and collectivity is pervasive and innate, yet has changed shape over time, influenced by cultural and societal norms as well as economic conditions. By understanding how our impulse to help others and to engage in community has evolved – showing up in different “containers” over time – we can see more clearly how our current conception of what “counts” as volunteering is also in flux. Formal volunteering, generally through volunteer agencies, is one structure to help meet a community’s needs, but it may no longer be meeting the needs of those who wish to offer up their time, energy, or skills to their community. Our historical lens allows us to see that altruism – a sacrifice from which one gains nothing in return – may not be the defining characteristic of volunteering and is not the only thing that gives these types of contribution their value. We can see that “volunteering” exists on a spectrum, from informal to formal, from reciprocal to “selfless.” We hope this perspective opens up space for curiosity about how our desires to care, connect and contribute surface themselves and how they may conflict with the formal volunteer opportunities available to us, while allowing space for us to reimagine what community care might look like in the future.
Sources:
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