The New Volunteerism
Is America poised for a surge in good works?
December 13, 1996 • Volume 6, Issue 46
By Charles S. Clark
Introduction
Feed the hungry, teach the illiterate, transport the elderly, staff the museums - the quintessentially
American willingness to lend a hand is demonstrated annually by 93 million volunteers. Giving of oneself has
long been a way to build civic-mindedness and learn about the world beyond one's back yard. But in the
current climate of shrinking government, volunteerism is emerging as more than just a conscience-comforting
avocation. Lawmakers are counting on a new burst of commitment to offset pending cuts in social service,
education and community development programs. But what is the proper role for government in promoting
volunteerism? Conservatives are wary of too much bureaucracy and a “politicized” agenda. Liberals see
government as a necessary catalyst that plugs holes in the social safety net.
Overview
It's Christmastime, and phone calls to the homeless shelter come thick and fast. “I'd like to bring some
cookies around,” says a typical first-time caller. Judy Caitland, executive director of the 80-bed Carpenter's
Shelter in Alexandria, Va., has grown accustomed to the seasonal rise in altruism. It dramatizes a key
distinction between “one-shot” volunteers and the long-term, committed volunteers the facility depends
upon. “Both groups are welcome and have lots to offer,” she says, “but we are more appreciative of those
who stay and build a relationship and learn more about why we're here.”
Carpenter's is blessed with a large group of community volunteers who serve on a regular schedule, staffing
the shelter's reception area, passing out supplies, preparing meals and bringing in new volunteers when
“others burn out or move away,” Caitland adds. The shelter's Rolodex of volunteers lists some 800 church
members, retirees and idealistic 20-somethings, many who help homeless clients with health care or resume
writing. The community support is indispensable, Caitland says.
Reliance on unpaid service may soon be more common - and necessary - in communities around the country.
In a time of shrinking government and skepticism toward bureaucratic social programs, volunteer groups
both public and private are banking on a new surge of activists. Their help is needed in everything from
literacy tutoring and home renovation to transporting the elderly and collecting door-to-door for cancer
research.
“If the era of big government is over, then the era of the big citizen must begin,” says former Sen. Harris L.
Wofford, D-Pa., chief executive officer of the federal government's Corporation for National Service. Its
AmeriCorps program is leading an effort to recruit more than 10 million new volunteers to pitch in around the
nation.
“Now is the right time for a fresh look at how we Americans give our money and our time,” says recent
Republican presidential candidate Lamar Alexander, who heads the new National Commission on Philanthropy
and Civic Renewal, which is funded by the conservative Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.
Interest in volunteerism clearly crosses party lines: President Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton,
along with former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald R. Ford, plan to attend a two-day summit on
volunteerism in February. The meeting in Philadelphia is sponsored by the Corporation for National Service
and the private Points of Light Foundation.
Boosters of the new volunteerism begin with a sizable effort already in progress. Some 93 million Americans
performed some type of volunteer effort in 1995 for an average of 4.2 hours a week, according to a
survey conducted by the Gallup Organization for Independent Sector, a national coalition of nearly 800
voluntary organizations, foundations and corporate-giving programs. A total of 20.3 billion volunteer
hours were logged in 1995, a billion more than in 1993.
Volunteering is a part of family life in 36 percent of households, according to a 1994 Gallup survey conducted
for the Points of Light Foundation. And charitable giving, which helps support many volunteer programs,
in 1995 rose by 5 percent over the previous year.
The business community is stepping up its workplace volunteer organizing. As many as 82 percent of
corporations surveyed last year by Boston College's Center for Corporate Community Relations sponsor
volunteer programs, while 26 percent give employees time off to volunteer .
Volunteer
spirit is particularly evident among the young. Nearly two-thirds of 240,000 college freshmen
surveyed in September 1995 said they had performed volunteer work in the past year.
And even
further down the age scale, the “Big Help” campaign sponsored by the children's cable television channel
Nickelodeon recently received 8.5 million calls from youngsters promising 92.5 million hours of community
service.
Historians assert that Americans have long alternated between inward-looking and outward-looking moods. If
so, observers at both ends of the political spectrum are predicting a swing of the national mood to
outward-looking, public-purpose activism. “Rather than just increased volunteerism, we're trying to find a
way to really solve problems,” Wofford says. “We need the twin engines of [government- sustained] full-time
service and millions of casual volunteers. We want to do what has never been done in these complicated
modern times but was commonplace in frontier times in small towns, such as raising barns or building
schools” with citizen labor.
No one says that increasing the ranks of volunteers will be easy. Data show that while many Americans indeed
do contribute to the common good, most volunteer work is done by an elite of “influentials” working
mainly at nonprofit groups. Since the 1940s, pollsters regularly have asked Americans if they have ever done
three or more of the following: attended a public meeting; written to their member of Congress; served on a
local committee; served as a local organization's officer; attended a political rally; written a letter to the
editor; made a speech; worked for a political party; belonged to a better-government group; held or run for
elected office; or written an article.
On average, only 10 percent of the population answer “yes” each year the survey is taken.
What's more, the kind of volunteering that some say is most needed - aid to the poor, for example - isn't
particularly popular. “Giving to public television is up, but we haven't had the same response for human
services, which are more expensive,” says David Beckmann, president of the anti-hunger group Bread for the
World in Silver Spring, Md. Indeed, volunteering for human services came in sixth in a ranking of volunteers'
most common areas of emphasis in a recent poll conducted by the University of Chicago's National Opinion
Research Center.
Why are many potential volunteers reluctant to commit to helping in the human services area? Experts say
that such problems often require more inspiration, time and will power than most Americans can summon.
“Acting with compassion is not doing good because we think we ought to,” write international activists Ram
Dass and Mirabai Bush. “It is being drawn to action by heartfelt compassion. It is giving ourselves into what
we are doing, being present in the moment - no matter how difficult, sad or even boring it feels, no matter
how much it demands.”
The factors that do encourage volunteers, according to Virginia Hodgkinson, vice president for research at
Independent Sector, include experience volunteering as a youth; spending time socially with people in
volunteer organizations; recent experience giving time to a friend or loved one; a high education level;
regular religious activity; and membership in a youth group.
People are also more likely to volunteer if they give money to charities, and if someone has asked them
to volunteer . Those least likely to volunteer , according to current data, are people ages 18-24, who
are single, black or Hispanic, and who have incomes under $20,000.
Many volunteers are motivated by a combination of selflessness and self-interest - such as the Washington,
D.C., woman who helps at an art museum: “I wanted to learn about art,” she said, “but it's also my
responsibility to give something back” to the community.
To skeptics, particularly some political conservatives, the movement for volunteerism reflects a certain
naivete, a refusal to make hardheaded calculations about whether good works actually work. “Today,” says
neoconservative scholar Irving Kristol, “an idealist is someone who, in the spirit of compassion, gives away
other people's money.”
Similarly, syndicated columnist George F. Will warns against “the danger of being
earnest in an era when that attribute seems like evidence of an itch to be an improver, which voters
nowadays consider a synonym for nuisance.”
But other conservatives, as well as many liberals, embrace volunteerism as a higher level of living. Author
and conservative columnist Ariana Huffington, who works with disadvantaged children in the nation's capital
on weekends, says the naysayers are “missing a fundamental point about life. Every major philosopher and
religious leader has stressed the importance of serving. The Constitution's language about the pursuit of
happiness refers not to seeking pleasure but doing good.”
As debate over the
new volunteerism
unfolds, these are
among the key issues
that are likely to be
debated:
Should government
play a strong role in
promoting
volunteerism?
“Americans have lost
patience with the
Great Society,”
Republican
presidential candidate
Bob Dole said last
summer. “But they
have not lost their
compassion for the
poor and their
commitment to the
common good.”
The heady days of the
1960s, when President
John F. Kennedy
inspired many with his
stirring “ask what you
can do” call to public
service, have given
way in the '90s to
wariness toward
ambitious government
programs. But feelings
toward volunteering
remain positive. That
was one of the
calculations behind the
administration's 1994
launch of AmeriCorps,
which President Clinton has called the “transcendent idea” of his presidency.
AmeriCorps planners have a vision far beyond the 25,000 full-time corps members who currently do
community work in 438 localities (and who receive stipends and education benefits). To push volunteerism to
a new level, planners at the so-called “Domestic Peace Corps” want to recruit more than 10 million part-time
volunteers to tutor children with reading problems, provide companionship for the elderly and renovate
low-income housing. AmeriCorps estimates that just from July- September 1995 alone, its members recruited
73,000 new volunteers who gave 700,000 hours of service.
“The challenge is how to split the atom of civic power,” CEO Wofford says. “National service can be a kind of
research and development operation into what works and what doesn't. It can be a school for volunteerism,
citizenship and teamwork.”
The new push for volunteers, of course, would not replace the role government has long played in the
nonprofit sector. In addition to the government's impact on volunteerism through tax and labor policy and
tort liability regulation, there are the myriad state and municipal commissions and councils on volunteerism
and the hundreds of volunteer coordinators at federal facilities around the country.
Government's interest in a healthy volunteer pool is also clear from the fact that many local government
programs, though taxpayer- funded, are designed with a built-in dependency on volunteers. In Portland,
Maine, the city's chauffeuring service for incapacitated elderly residents includes 15 volunteer drivers in
its team of 20; in Los Angeles, the Child Advocates Office of the welfare department counts on 275 unpaid
child-abuse investigators.
Most significant, much of the training, direction and materials provided to volunteers by nonprofits is funded
by government. In 1995, some 600,000 charitable organizations received 37 percent of their estimated $575
billion in expenses from different levels of government, according to an Independent Sector study.
There is some evidence of past success in government efforts to build volunteerism, even without the
galvanizing push of a clear national crisis on the order of World War II. During the 1980s, for example, a
special office for volunteers set up by North Carolina prompted fully 70 percent of all adults in the state to
perform
volunteer
work worth an estimated $300 million.
But in the current climate of budget-balancing and government cutbacks, philosophical opponents of active
government have been vocal in warning of wasteful bureaucracy and taxpayer-subsidized partisan politics.
AmeriCorps itself often has been slammed as “coerced volunteerism” by House Speaker Newt Gingrich,
R-Ga., and as an “outrageous boondoggle” by Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa.
And in 1995, soon after
congressional Republicans began pursuing federal budget cuts under their “Contract with America,” a group
of leftist activists from ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) staged a
protest at an event where Gingrich had been scheduled to speak. Gingrich stayed away, but he later made
much of the fact that ACORN was an AmeriCorps grant recipient.
Other critics argue that government efforts actually stifle the volunteer sector. “All of us should have a
responsibility to our family and community, and if we shrink the government sector, we can resuscitate that
spirit among ourselves,” says Jessica Gavora, director of programs for the conservative New Citizenship
Project. “Many will want to work in the community if given the opportunity, and their self-interest combines
with genuine concern for their fellow man. When government tries to come in as an equal partner, it's so big
and unwieldy that it overshadows the private sector with its easily accessible funding. Government is not
accountable or controlled like the business and nonprofit sectors, which have to sustain themselves.”
Hudson Institute President Leslie Lenkowski, a board member of the Corporation for National Service, says:
“The notion that government can stimulate volunteerism is the kind of arrogance that gives national service a
bad name. I believe there is a role for public policy in encouraging volunteerism, but we should keep it
modest. Local charities can benefit from grants-in-aid that provide a full- time staff. That way, when the
volunteers come in on a Saturday, the materials [for home building, for example] are there, and the site is
clear for the eager bodies who want to help.”
Similar distinctions are made by Marvin Olasky, a professor of history and journalism at the University of
Texas who has written widely on philanthropy. “The Preamble to the Constitution says we should promote the
general welfare,” he says. “But there is a big difference between providing and promoting. In the past,
government has been in the habit of providing.”
As an example of proper promoting, Olasky cites the state's capital, Austin, which provides free maintenance
for baseball fields used by the Optimist Club for youth programs in disadvantaged neighborhoods. “If the
government tries to pick the places that are eligible, as AmeriCorps does, you get into some First Amendment
problems” with volunteers from religious groups that want to incorporate a spiritual dimension to their work,
he says. “I'd be happy if government encouraged it with a tax credit, but I don't want [Health and Human
Services Secretary] Donna Shalala to make the calls” as to who gets services.
Clinton-appointee Wofford sees too much ideology in such criticism. “If your primary interest is getting
government out of people's lives, then close down the government; that drastic tactic was already tried,” he
says, referring to last December's budget stalemate between Congress and the White House. “But if you want
to solve problems, government can be one of the central elements.”
Wofford points to the partnership between government and Millard Fuller, founder of the home-building
group Habitat for Humanity. “He is a religious conservative who at first didn't want government or
AmeriCorps,” Wofford says. “But he agreed to work with AmeriCorps because he wants all American families
to have housing, and he knows that without some full-time staff, there won't be anyone to organize or recruit
the volunteers.
“Conservatives haven't realized that they won on the issue of how we structured AmeriCorps,” Wofford
continues. “[Back in the 1960s], the Peace Corps was centrally controlled, and it told its volunteers where
they would go. AmeriCorps, by contrast, is much more like a voucher system.” In other words, “volunteers
choose the organizations where they want to work, and the organizations receive funding to carry out their
mission.”
As for the complaint that government-funded volunteers can veer off into lobbying or partisan politics, many
veterans of nonprofits accept that possibility as inevitable. Nathaniel Winship, a longtime volunteer
community nutrition activist in Massachusetts, says that most anti-hunger activists “realize that volunteering
is at best a stopgap measure. The educated volunteer soon realizes that we need to translate this work
into getting the whole system to take care of things. It's no secret that some of the best advocates have
gotten federal money over the years, which has always been controversial. In the end, the cure for poverty is
money.”
Beckmann of Bread for the World agrees, noting that his group's work against hunger is affected by the
government's “macroeconomic and education policies, the earned-income tax credit, the minimum wage and
jobs growth.”
Huffington, who runs the Center for Effective Compassion, an education and advocacy group, says: “The
mistake my friends on the left make is that they think advocacy is the way to spend time. But advocacy is an
inferior involvement to being in the trenches. The conservative mistake is to assume that cuts in government
will be enough to restore citizen participation.
“People should quit arguing over the role of government and program cuts and increase their giving of money
and time. We're in a crisis, and if we don't make big changes, we will all have to deal with the social
breakdown.”
Hodgkinson says that studies of volunteers show that they are more realistic about social problems once they
get involved, and that most believe that both government and the nonprofit sector have roles to play. “If
conservative means the goal is self-help, then volunteers are with that,” she says. “But most see it as a
co-responsibility.”
The question of whether government can spend money effectively on behalf of volunteerism is “a valid one,”
says Julian Wolpert, a professor at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International
Affairs. “Simply passing out funds through a bureaucracy, without any direct contact with the needy,”
certainly has not worked very well, he says. But it is also true, he adds, that areas with active governments Minneapolis, Minn., Pittsburgh, Pa., Cleveland, Ohio, for example - are the same areas that also have active
volunteer
sectors.
It is questionable, Wolpert says, whether the self-appointed volunteer and religious groups can do the
job well. It might be better to have an active government that provides people with the skills, backgrounds
and relationships with professionals than to rely on “well-meaning but not knowledgeable volunteers who want
to impose their own beliefs on people.” Most of the clients, he adds, “don't need advice. They simply don't
have enough money for food or shelter.”
Can volunteers make up for what the poor may lose from welfare reform?
“Give a man a fish, and you've given him a meal. Teach him to fish, and he'll have food for a lifetime.”
The old adage - invoked by people of all political stripes in the volunteer community - acquired new
significance this year when Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, the massive overhaul of the
nation's 61-year-old welfare program. The plan is to reduce federal welfare and nutrition spending by $54
billion over the next six years and give states responsibility for managing federal funding in the form of block
grants.
To reassure those who worry that the poor may suffer, backers of the plan promise, among other
things, that the charitable and volunteer community will step into the breach, taking advantage of a
provision in the new law that allows religious groups to receive public funds. But many leaders of nonprofits
anticipate disaster.
“We're almost certain to see increases in hunger or poverty in the next three to 10 years, and kids sleeping
under bridges,” says Beckmann of Bread for the World. “ Volunteer groups are not equipped to
redistribute goods from one part of the country to another,” he adds. “They will be forced into rationing and
triage.” To compensate for the cuts, he calculates that each of the country's 350,000 churches and synagogues
would have to raise an additional $150,000 over the next six years.
Princeton's Wolpert says the amount of money needed for welfare is so great that “if the states don't
compensate for the federal cuts, we won't be able to maintain the social safety net.” As for volunteers, the
need is greatest in places where they are most absent, and many of them prefer to volunteer in
education and the arts rather than human services, “where the problems seem too long-term and massive.”
Independent Sector's Hodgkinson cautions that it is too early to be certain how states will alter their current
welfare programs in reaction to the federal changes. But judging from progress in states that tackled welfare
reform early, such as New Jersey and Wisconsin, she predicts that many in the volunteer community
“will feel overwhelmed” by an increase in “the working poor” - people newly released from welfare benefits
who are struggling at jobs just above the poverty line.
“Volunteers are needed,” Hodgkinson says, “but we can't assume that they come for free.” In day care,
nursing-home staffing and alcohol and drug counseling, volunteers can be useful, but they need guidance and
training from professionals. “There's always been a partnership between government and volunteer
organizations,” she says. “If you take that contract away, you have a diminished capacity.”
As a backer of welfare reform, Olasky at the University of Texas agrees only partially, arguing that it's worth
a try to see whether the overall welfare burden declines. “Some welfare recipients' behavior will change, and
some will get jobs,” he says. “Churches will do something, the community will do something, and the Odd
Fellows, Elks and Optimist clubs will do something. It's unclear, but it's not something we have to know going
in. We should push it as far as it goes, and then see if there's a new government role.”
Olasky adds that volunteers will be more successful if they emphasize a one-on-one personal bonding with
needy people, challenging their past habits and working from a “spiritual base.” The government approach
emphasizes entitlement, he says. “You need some people who are well-trained in management, but volunteers
who bond one-on-one will do better because they will have responsibility for just a few people. I would
rather have five volunteers working for stipends than one master of social work.”
Yet even backers of privatizing welfare warn that volunteer religious groups have much to learn.
“Unfortunately, many churches and synagogues, mosques and other places of worship basically copy the
government's approach: They provide the poor with food, clothing and emergency financial aid, but with
little personal attention or follow- up,” writes Amy Sherman, a visiting fellow at the conservative Ethics and
Public Policy Center. “Clearly, welfare reform inside churches must accompany the welfare reforms emerging
from state capitals.”
Wolpert says there is no evidence that this approach works. “The average person neither knows nor greatly
cares about the organization chart of safety-net programs of government and private agencies,” he writes.
“Few are even aware of the sources of support for the social services provided in their communities, and
most probably have no opinion on whether government or private charity is inherently best at providing
assistance to the poor. The public at large, therefore, has not discerned a necessity for private charity to
displace government welfare programs. The advocacy for that shift emanates solely from the right, acting on
the basis of ideology.”
Though predicting the worst, Beckmann acknowledges that welfare reform will create new opportunities
among charitable groups for helping welfare beneficiaries move to jobs. “Quite a few middle-class church
people will have the experience of helping, say, 100-200 welfare mothers, which is good for the 100-200, but
it carries the danger of false consciousness,” he says. “People will tell themselves, 'Hey, we're reforming
welfare,' but it doesn't really make a dent.”
Even so, Beckmann, an ordained minister, says the volunteer community is not likely to allow the
welfare changes to demoralize them. “Religious people expect to end up on the cross,” he says. “They didn't
get into this expecting to win.”
*The Points of Light Foundation was founded in 1990 to encourage volunteerism and takes its name from President
George Bush's reference to volunteers as “a thousand points of light.” The foundation receives 40 percent of its funding
from the appropriation for the Corporation for National Service; the rest comes from foundations and corporations.
Background
Philosophical debates over American volunteerism frequently invoke the insights of the French writer and
politician Alexis de Tocqueville. In the 1830s, after a trip to study the U.S. penal system, he wrote
Democracy in America. The collection of observations on the new nation's behaviors and institutions to this
day continues to hold a mirror up to America's identity.
“I have often seen Americans make really great sacrifices for the common good,” he wrote, “and I have
noticed a hundred cases in which, when help was needed, they hardly ever failed to give each other trusty
support.”
What's more, he noted in an often-repeated observation, Americans are joiners. They are in the habit of
forming voluntary associations to create schools, hospitals and churches, and also “if they want to proclaim a
truth or propagate some feeling by the encouragement of a great example. . . . In every case, at the head of
any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government or in England some territorial magnate,
in the United States you are sure to find an association.”
This tradition of mutual aid and belonging unprompted by government would persist through the 19th century
as Americans formed the great voluntary associations of the modern era - the American Red Cross, the
Salvation Army and the National PTA. Though the work of such groups often intersected with government, the
motivations of the members were moralistic and often religious.
In her study of poverty and compassion during the Victorian era, historian Gertrude Himmelfarb comments
that the ethos of the times required that volunteers focus not just on giving money but on effective character
building. The approach was “neither sentimental or utopian,” she writes. “It was stern not only in the
personal demands it made upon its missionaries - the commitment in time, labor and energy it exacted from
philanthropists and reformers - but also in the nature of that commitment. Compassion had its reasons of
mind as well as of the heart.”
Olasky, in his history of American philanthropy, sees similar commitments to relationship-building in the
work of the “female charitable societies” and “ladies benevolent societies” that operated in New York and
other cities in the early 1800s. “These groups emphasized personal contact with the poor, even when some of
their members were stunned by the firsthand experience,” he writes. “They refused to settle for the
feed-and-forget principle or its equally depersonalizing but harsher opposite, the forget-and-don't-feel
standard.”
The perception of a conflict between the charitable impulse and government policy was not prevalent until
well into the 20th century, when conservatives began resisting the government anti-poverty activism of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s and President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society in
the 1960s.
One such critique, Richard C. Cornuelle's Reclaiming the American Dream: The Role of Private Individuals
and Voluntary Associations, appeared in 1965 amid the flurry of Great Society legislation and the expansion
of government cooperation with foundations and nonprofits. Denouncing the charitable world's growing
reliance on bureaucratic organizations and middlemen, Cornuelle hearkened back to de Tocqueville.
“We wanted, from the beginning, a free society, free in the sense that each man was his own supervisor and
the architect of his own ambitions,” Cornuelle wrote. “We wanted as well, with equal fervor, a good society a humane, responsible society in which helping hands reached out to people in honest distress, in which
common needs were met freely and fully. . . . In pursuit of this ambition, Americans used remarkable
imagination.”
Motivating Volunteers
People perform volunteer work for complex reasons. As Harvard University psychiatrist Robert Coles has
written, the inner conflicts of the “call to service” are seldom clean or settled. “In medical school, I was
always on the verge of dropping out because I felt utterly inadequate. . . . I went to visit [Catholic
anti-poverty crusader] Dorothy Day's community on the Lower East Side more as a refuge from my own life
than in response to what she and her co- workers were doing.” Day had a simple answer to his confusion about
service to others. “'If I were going to forbid hypocrites to work here with us,”' she told him, “'there'd be no
one to do the work, and no one to do the forbidding!' ”
Clearly, some individuals are drawn to volunteering out of a need to shock the establishment. An extreme
example was the “Digger” movement in San Francisco, Calif., in the mid-1960s. Described in the media as a
“hippie, philanthropic, do-gooder organization,” the anarchistic Diggers “are hip to property,” wrote one of
its founders. “Everything is free, do your own thing. Human beings are the means of exchange. Food,
machines, clothing, materials, shelter and props are merely there. . . . If someone asks to see the manager,
tell him he's the manager.”
“Visionaries,” a recent public television documentary about middle-class people who abandon secure jobs to
find fulfillment in service to the poor and sick, boiled the motives down to a strong ability to empathize.
“The more you examine the common traits of today's visionaries,” writes the documentary's producer, “the
more you begin to see that a key component of their personalities is a belief in the power of human emotion.”
Others acknowledge that service can be a way to distract oneself from life's rougher patches. Nutrition
activist Winship, a small farmer, says: “I never wanted to get rich, and so I'm proud that my family has made
do despite my having been laid off many times due to the uncertainty of the social service world. But
sometimes I take an existential point of view that says life isn't everything it's cracked up to be. My way of
dealing with it is doing something for others. My life is good compared to that of the poor people I try to
help, so I share the wealth.”
Tips for Recruiting
The main barriers to volunteering, according to a Red Cross study, are language and cultural differences,
economic hardships, physical handicaps, time constraints, distance from sites and too few opportunities for
family togetherness.
An astonishing 74 percent of respondents to a recent Wirthlin Group survey said they
don't volunteer simply because they don't know how to get started.
The key to recruiting volunteers, according to Independent Sector, is to get them while they're young. Some
44 percent of teenage volunteers surveyed said they got started before their 11th birthday, often through a
church youth group or a school program such as Kids in Action in Baltimore, Md.
Most significantly, the most fertile fields for recruiters are among people who are active in organized
religion. A 1995 Independent Sector poll found that among religious respondents, 76 percent give money and
55 percent volunteer ; by comparison, among those not involved in a religion only 50 percent give and 34
percent volunteer . People who vote in presidential elections are also more likely to volunteer .
Though many people cite a lack of time as the reason for not volunteering, studies of Americans' daily
routines point to a surprising conclusion: The way to get something done is to ask a busy person. “Employed
people belong to somewhat more groups than those outside the paid labor force,” writes Harvard scholar
Robert D. Putnam. Even more striking is the fact that among workers, longer hours are linked to more civic
engagement, not less.
Most volunteering, adds University of Maryland time-use specialist John Robinson, is done by people with
either the shortest or the longest work weeks and does not decline with marriage or the arrival of children.
Volunteering is most prevalent in rural areas, and on weekends, particularly Sunday. “Far more altruistic
activity,” he writes in a forthcoming book, “appears in the form of personal help than [is] done through a
formal organization, reflecting the presence of those 'thousand points of light' we keep hearing about but
almost never see.”
A 1995 survey by the Points of Light Foundation found that women volunteers are more likely to work with
children with learning disabilities, teen mothers and pregnant teenagers. Men are more likely to work with
programs related to alcohol and drug abuse.
Need for Training
One reason nonprofits prefer committed volunteers to casuals is the need for training. At Princeton, says
Wolpert, the 500-600 students who've been working with underprivileged children are trained not to invest
their own egos in keeping a needy, often minority child dependent on a relationship with a middle-class
white. “We teach them to avoid making statements like, 'You've got to be like me,' and we train them to
listen, to know what to do if a kid tells you he witnessed a crime or speaks of abuse at home. We train them
in when to call in the professionals.”
Similarly, managers of nonprofits are taught how to deal effectively with volunteers. Jerry Poggi, senior
director of training at the United Way of America's National Academy of Voluntarism in Alexandria, Va., says
his group is sensitive to the criticism advanced by many conservatives that nonprofits are hidebound in
bureaucracy and large budgets. He gives the United Way professionals, volunteers and corporate executives
he trains a thorough grounding in “tools and techniques of good management, fund-raising and community
development. We're into state-of-the-art on how to interact in the appropriate manner with all groups. This
requires professional training.”
The notion that inspired volunteers can serve the poor more effectively than trained professionals is not
borne out by research, according to Johns Hopkins University scholar Lester A. Salamon. He found that the
alienation that often accompanies steady contact with poverty is more apt to discourage volunteers than
professionals. He also discovered that nonprofits staffed with the highest proportion of professionals spent
more time actually addressing problems of the poor than those staffed more by volunteers. His surveys of
nonprofit professionals, not surprisingly, found that 80 percent rejected the suggestion that “volunteers can
be substituted extensively for paid professionals in nonprofit organizations without any significant decline in
quality.”
Politics a Turnoff
One reason offered for the recent rise in volunteerism is the fact that many Americans who crave civic
involvement appear turned off by politics. A Points of Light Foundation survey of 240 volunteer leaders
in June found that 76 percent viewed the political process as ineffective in helping citizens change their
communities. The same percentage said volunteers could help make politics better. This “confirms for us
that volunteer engagement is not just nice, it's extremely necessary,” says foundation President Robert
K. Goodwin. “Getting people volunteering together on issues they care about is a way to build trust.”
The belief that the volunteer movement can enhance the political process is the basis of the “civic
volunteerism model” put forward recently by a trio of political scientists. “The resources of money, time and
civic skills derive from involvements in family, job, organizations and religious institutions,” they write. “If
we can link political activity back to resources, and resources, in turn, back to their institutional origins, we
shall thus be able to establish the roots of citizen activity in the basic institutions of civil society.”
Conservatives, says columnist Huffington, have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to volunteering to
tackle social problems. “There's an enormous complacency in the world of politics,” she says, “and the role
models are such that there is more cachet in giving to the arts, prestigious colleges and teaching hospitals.
But I don't see how you can justify refurbishing an opera house when there are poor people 10 minutes away.”
Liberals think too narrowly in viewing action as either paid or charitable, says George Washington University
social scientist Amitai Etzioni, who helped found the communitarian movement to improve community life.
“The image of volunteerism and doing good is very American and very important, but it isn't really
community,” he says. “Community means that in, say, crime watch, you watch my house and I watch yours.
This is what can restore the fabric of society. You don't want to base it completely on altruism, which is too
frail a base. Rather than making it sound negative, there should be joy involved, like friendship or good sex.
It's not something that someone has to give up or put up with.”
Current Situation
Just before the September 1993 passage of the bill launching AmeriCorps, a national service prototype
dubbed the “Summer of Service” by President Clinton went into action. Funded with $10 million, the
program put some 1,500 young adults to work in 16 projects in community improvement and inner-city health
counseling.
Conservative critics were quick to pounce. Jill K. Cunningham, managing editor of Philanthropy, Culture and
Society, described the summer project she visited in Baltimore as a “Potemkin village” where, for $130 a
week and $1,000 in education benefits, the young workers performed calisthenics, ate buffet dinners and
visited theme parks under the watch of TV news cameras, but spent very little time ministering to
underprivileged youth.
“Recruiters for the program placed a high priority on racial, ethnic and class 'diversity' in choosing
participants,” added another critic. “Predictably, a training session held near San Francisco quickly
balkanized into black, Hispanic, Native American and gay/lesbian/bisexual caucuses, leading The Washington
Monthly to dub the program the 'P.C. Corps.' ”
By 1994, AmeriCorps was up and running, awarding grants administered by the Corporation for National
Service. The corporation now administers the old VISTA program and the National Civilian Community Corps,
as well as a college-tutoring program called Learn and Serve America and the National Senior Service Corps,
which handles programs for foster grandparents and senior companions. In 1994-95, more than 600 businesses
and foundations gave more than $41 million in funds and in-kind resources to AmeriCorps.
“You'll be surprised by what one year of service does for your country, your resume and your future,”
AmeriCorps bus ads tell the nation's youth. Many youngsters who sign up are attracted by the annual stipend,
currently $7,500 for full-time workers, plus $4,725 in education benefits and health- and child-care services.
But in 1995, when the Republicans took over Congress, there were proposals to zero out AmeriCorps' funding which prompted President Clinton to threaten to veto a major appropriations bill. Critics such as Sen.
Grassley complained that too many AmeriCorps hirees were simply working for federal agencies. He
produced figures arguing that the cost of an AmeriCorps volunteer was as high as $42,000, far more than
the $17,000 estimated by the first CEO of the Corporation for National Service, Eli Segal. (Spokesmen for
conservative groups testifying before Congress put the figure at $30,000, while a General Accounting Office
study said that when state and local government contributions were added in, the average AmeriCorps
volunteer
cost some $27,000.
)
“AmeriCorps' premise was flawed, and it was an unhealthy development in volunteerism,” says Gavora of the
New Citizenship Project. “Having the government pay people to volunteer won't spark civic renewal
because the incentives are all wrong. It has a corrupting effect for charities that get the grants. Habitat for
Humanity, for example, does great things, but now it has lobbying offices in Washington, D.C.”
AmeriCorps Gets Reprieve
As things turned out, the Republicans didn't kill off AmeriCorps. Last spring, Grassley and AmeriCorps' CEO
Wofford agreed to give the program new life. The agency has promised to reduce costs from $17,629 per
member to $15,000 by 1999. It also will discontinue grants to federal agencies while better policing against
lobbying and partisan political activity; seek more private funds, tapping into existing civic and religious
groups; boost state autonomy in running AmeriCorps programs; and resurrect the “Points of Light” awards,
which have lain dormant since the Bush administration.
Wofford was plainly pleased that Congress, toward the end of this year's election-year session, restored
nearly $200 million to the appropriation that funds AmeriCorps and other key National Service Corporation
programs in fiscal 1997. ** This will finance as many as 11,000 new slots for the program, particularly in its
work-study program for college student tutors who can implement President Clinton's campaign promise that
all the nation's third-graders will get help learning to read.
The Hudson Institute's Lenkowski is dubious about AmeriCorps' goal of spearheading a new volunteerism. “I
know of community volunteers who haven't even heard of the Corporation for National Service,” he says. “We
will know whether it's working when it's been helpful to lots of people who right now are doing things below
the public's radar screen.”
New Initiatives
As an alternative to an activist government approach to social action, many in the volunteer community
are backing new tax credits. In September 1995, Sen. Daniel R. Coats, R-Ind., and former Education
Secretary William J. Bennett introduced the Project for American Renewal, a legislative proposal to give tax
credits to individuals. The goal was to keep money needed for good works in the hands of community
volunteers, rather than taxing it for redistribution by the government.
In June 1996, Coats and Rep. John R. Kasich, R-Ohio, expanded the plan into a 16-plank legislative package
“pursuing a bold new definition of public compassion and fulfilling our responsibilities to the
disadvantaged.” It was organized around themes of effective compassion, community empowerment,
fathering, mentoring and family. In May, the Senate approved one of the new planks, which permits doctors,
nurses and other health professionals to provide volunteer care to poor people without risk of
malpractice suits. The Coats-sponsored provision was attached to the Kennedy-Kassebaum health insurance
reform bill signed by Clinton in August.
The president has expressed some interest in the Coats package. And Wofford calls it “a very constructive
approach. But I'm in favor of a balanced budget, so I want to understand the full costs.” Libertarians,
however, have attacked the tax credits as more “social engineering.”
Private Efforts
In the debate over government and volunteering, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that most volunteering is
orchestrated privately. In October, Youth Service America, a 7,000-group coalition founded to promote
community service, opened its SERVnet site on the Internet. Like AmeriCorps, it hopes to recruit 10 million
new volunteers, by offering online “chat rooms” about volunteering and matching potential volunteers with
organizations.
In October, on National Make a Difference Day, organized by Gannett Co.'s USA Weekend magazine,
thousands of church groups, scout troops and individual volunteers around the country turned out for such
projects as painting community centers, planting shrubbery and stabilizing historic buildings.
Every April, the Share Our Strength anti-hunger group sponsors “Taste of the Nation” food and wine tastings
to raise money in more than 100 cities. This fall, it joined with Second Harvest, Bread for the World and
other like-minded groups to form an umbrella organization that will coordinate anti-hunger strategy under
the theme “Hunger Has a Cure.”
In the corporate world, AT&T inaugurated a new volunteerism policy in November, becoming the largest U.S.
company to guarantee all its employees (127,000 nationwide) a day off to do volunteer work. Though
volunteers must clear their day off with supervisors, they will not be required to provide proof of the
activity. A company spokesman said employees had expressed rising frustration with the absence of time for
volunteer
work, and that next year's experiment with the plan, if successful, could be continued.
Overall, fully 77 percent of the companies polled in 1993 by The Conference Board, a New York-based
business group, agreed that volunteer programs benefit corporate strategic goals; and 90 percent said
they build teamwork, improve morale and attract better employees.
On campuses, some 15,000 students have signed up for “Break Away,” a program launched at Vanderbilt
University in 1991, in which students devote their between-semester breaks to helping migrant workers or
children in Head Start programs on Indian reservations.
At American University in Washington, the
Freshman Service Experience program organizes students in such activities as serving at soup kitchens and
weeding lawns at undermaintained public schools. And at Harvard, some 1,700 students work in food pantries
and homeless shelters under the auspices of the Phillips Brooks House Association, a campus nonprofit that
has a full-time administrative staff funded by the university.
“There's been a volunteerism boom among students in the past five years,” says Roy Bahat, treasurer of the
group. “And though Harvard doesn't offer academic credit for service like some schools do, there are courses
in which service learning is integrated.”
*Habitat for Humanity, which since 1976 has built more than 50,000 low-income homes worldwide, opened the Washington
office in 1993, it says, to build relationships with other U.S. nonprofits and with the embassies of the 40 countries where it
works.
*** The total fiscal 1997 budget for the Corporation for National Service is $616.5 million.
Outlook
“I believe that the genius of the United States is basically humanitarian,” novelist James Michener wrote in a
recent essay. “We are idealists who have always been willing to experiment with new social orders and new
solutions to old problems. We are not a horde of people who will march backward.”
Indeed, a recent Points of Light Foundation survey found that half of the adults not currently volunteering say
they probably will in the future. But mobilizing a great army of the unpaid could be a tall order. As Lamar
Alexander points out, “For every hour we volunteer , we watch TV for six hours.” And many average
Americans feel uncomfortable around “do-gooders.” A recent review of a new biography of Pearl S. Buck, the
legendary author and U.S. missionary in China, makes the discouraging but all-too-human assertion that “she
got on people's nerves. She did too many good deeds.”
There is also the great enemy of those who give themselves to service: cynicism. It shows itself as the letdown
that sets in when problems seem intractable, when the energy required by selflessness burns out. Veteran
volunteers know better than anyone the challenges of sorting one's true motivations. “Guilt about the
homeless on the New York streets led one woman to work long hours at a job she hated in a soup kitchen,
where she came to resent the very people she hoped to serve,” write activists Dass and Bush. “In the long
run, guilt, as does self-gratification, often turns out to be unsatisfying as a motivator.”
The solace that religion offers to so many Americans suggests that religion, with its emphasis on good works,
may grow in its influence on volunteerism. “Religious volunteers are a great untapped pool,” says the
University of Texas' Olasky. Without much fanfare, “millions of volunteers just go out and do what they can,
many of them even full time. They go to their church and say, 'Here's the budget I need; will you each give
me $25 a month?' ”
Beckmann of Bread for the World, by contrast, says that his God wants him to be working to connect people
of goodwill to the machinery of public policy in order to help poor people. “When volunteers also get
directly involved in education and advocacy,” he says, “they can have huge impact.”
Hudson's Lenkowski prescribes a more subdued approach, citing the admonition of 12th-century Jewish
theologian Maimonides that people should give quietly. “Not getting publicity is not a bad thing.” he says.
Conservative activist Huffington sees volunteering as an imperative, warning that “the middle class can't be
insulated from the breakdown of urban America. Giving time is critical to rebuilding the broken connection,”
she says. “Having an adult visit with at-risk children for an hour a week is the single most significant factor in
reducing violence.”
Wofford of the Corporation for National Service sees a landscape ripe for change. “Most people need to be
needed for something other than doing for themselves,” he says. “This is especially [true] in the years
between adolescence and one's career, when people want to go on adventures, to test themselves and make a
difference. If the volunteer world doesn't rise to this new challenge, if it just keeps pointing out that
there are 90 million volunteers but doesn't mobilize them, then the cynicism about whether we can govern
ourselves will deepen.”
Pro/Con
Should the federal government try to stimulate volunteerism through its national
service program?
Harris Wofford
John P. Walters
CEO, Corporation for National Service.. From an
address to Americorps Renewal Conference, Oct.
30, 1996.
President, The New Citizenship Project..
Memorandum on “Republicans and the Politics of
Meaning,” May 29, 1996.
Consensus has emerged at the highest levels that
the problems we face - crime, drugs, teen
pregnancy, illiteracy, school dropouts - can't be
solved by government alone. It is only through
citizens acting together that we can solve these
problems.
If the era of big government is over, then the era
of big citizens must begin. If we're not going to
have large new government programs to create a
Great Society, then we'd better have Great
Citizens, who can act on the problems that are
mounting and festering in our midst. . . .
Over the past 18 months, we've had a lot to say
about the president's national service program,
principally that it represents an unnecessary and
corrupting intrusion of government into the
voluntary sector. Our critics have scoffed, calling
us narrowly partisan, or worse. But here we are,
just three years after President Clinton signed into
law the National and Community Service Act, and
its pernicious effects are being felt. Republicans
and Democrats alike are seriously at work
constructing a “new paradigm” of voluntarism
based not on the institutions of civil society but
the institution of government. . . .
When Martin Luther King saw that the battle to get
the vote and end legal segregation was won, he did
not rest on the victory. He raised his sights to the
bigger mountain of race and class and urban
problems. We too must open our eyes to the next
challenge - the higher mountains we have to climb
in national service. . . .
Gone is the old Tocquevillian ethic of citizens
coming together voluntarily for no more
compensation than the sense of satisfaction that
comes from bettering the lives of themselves and
their communities. In its stead . . . we are
fostering a new kind of “voluntarism” that takes
its direction from government, not citizens.
The greatest challenge is to bring national service
to scale, making it truly national, unleashing the
power of service on a scale large enough to really
solve some of the most important problems facing
our country. . . . The strategic plan adopted by
our board has some big plans and big goals for the
next three years: Expand the Senior Corps to at
least 1 million volunteers by the year 2000; help
make service part of the ethic and practice of
every school and college in America; double the
number of community volunteers recruited and
organized through our programs; dramatically
increase the number of people performing service
through AmeriCorps and all the other programs of
the Corporation [for National Service].
But doubling or even tripling our programs is not
enough. Our vision goes far beyond that. We want
a nation where service is valued and known
throughout the country because it touches millions
of Americans. A nation where people look first to
themselves and one another to improve their lives.
A nation where service is a rite of passage for
every young person, a routine part of life for
Americans of every age. To make this quantum
leap in service, we must look beyond our own
programs. National service should be a catalyst for
unleashing a much larger service movement. . . .
[W]e will take the best of what works around the
country and try to make it contagious. We need to
find the pilot programs that are working and throw
the spotlight on them. What is the purpose of the
pilot of a furnace? It's to ignite the whole furnace.
AmeriCorps has started all kinds of pilots, some
wonderful pilots, and now our job must be to
ignite the whole.
The reinvention of voluntarism claims to privatize
the welfare state while in fact extending the reach
of government into private charity, turning
citizens into government-subsidized workers. . . .
This new vision of volunteerism goes hand in hand
with calls for compulsory-service requirements in
public high schools. And where government cannot
mandate service, it will subsidize and direct it
through programs like AmeriCorps. In this way,
not only will our social needs be met, but
individuals will be transformed into citizens by
the benevolent, guiding hand of the state. . . .
Supporters of AmeriCorps have always defended
the program as a new kind of bureaucratic animal,
a hybrid somewhere between the private sector
and the state, that would use the resources of
government to strengthen the non-governmental
sector. But . . . . in its three years of existence,
AmeriCorps has been revealed to be riddled with
bureaucracy, cost overruns and financial
mismanagement - that is, with all the problems of
big government. . . .
We predict that AmeriCorps will have more
success transforming our understanding of
voluntarism than in transforming itself. . . .
[V]oluntarism cannot be bought. Giving oneself
costs something; it must cost something or it is
meaningless. Anything less is essentially a job.
And government programs that fund such activity
are called jobs programs.
Chronology
1800s
Volunteer
and charitable groups are mostly private and religious.
1878
The Salvation Army is founded by street missionaries in England.
1881
Clara Barton founds American Red Cross to bring aid in times of war and national
disaster.
1897
Forerunner of National PTA is founded in Washington, D.C.
1900s-1950s
Economic swings spawn talk of national service.
1906
Psychologist William James calls for “moral equivalent of war” in which youth would
be conscripted to serve the nation.
1933
President Franklin D. Roosevelt creates Civilian Conservation Corps, sending
unemployed men to work in rural areas.
1960s
Government service inspires volunteers.
1961
President John F. Kennedy creates Peace Corps to enable Americans to
overseas.
1964
President Lyndon B. Johnson creates Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), a
domestic version of the Peace Corps.
1970s
Success of Great Society programs is questioned.
1971
Congress creates ACTION to coordinate Peace Corps and VISTA.
1976
Habitat for Humanity is founded by Millard and Linda Fuller in Americus, Ga., to build
housing for low-income families.
1980s
Domestic hunger and homelessness become issues among volunteers.
1980
Independent Sector is founded in Washington as coalition of voluntary organizations.
1986
Youth Service America is founded to promote ideals of service in National Youth
Service Day.
1988
Congress creates Student Literacy Corps for college student volunteers.
Aug. 18, 1988
In his acceptance speech at Republican Convention, presidential candidate George
Bush coins phrase “1,000 points of light.”
1990s
Non-governmental anti-hunger volunteers top 900,000. Debate over national
service comes to fore.
1990
Points of Light Foundation is founded in Washington. President Bush signs National
Community Service Act creating a commission to study national service.
Sept. 21, 1993
President Clinton signs National and Community Service Trust Act, which provides
educational awards to individuals who perform community service.
September 1994
First class of AmeriCorps volunteers goes to work.
January 1995
In his State of the Union address, President Clinton calls AmeriCorps the “essence” of
his “new covenant” with the American people.
May 1995
Republican congressional budget resolutions call for huge cuts in Clinton's AmeriCorps
program.
September 1995
Sen. Daniel R. Coats, R-Ind., and former Education Secretary William J. Bennett
introduce Project for American Renewal to encourage volunteers.
December 1995
Following Clinton vetoes of GOP budgets, AmeriCorps funding survives, though at 44
percent less than Clinton requested.
volunteer
Oct. 26, 1996
Nearly a million Americans
volunteer
on national “Make a Difference Day.”
Feb. 17-18, 1997
Current and former presidents and first ladies are scheduled to gather in Philadelphia
for summit on service sponsored by Corporation for National Service and Points of
Light Foundation.
Short Features
Fail to Volunteer and You Might Fail High School
“It is in giving ourselves to others that we find ourselves,” Bernie Noe, upper school principal at Sidwell
Friends School in Washington, D.C., assures his teenage students. He is instructing them in the Quaker
tradition of community service, lived out in such activities as cleaning up the C&O Canal, picking vegetables
for the poor or renovating a low-income house for the national program Christmas in April.
As a private school, Sidwell has long had the unchallenged right to require its graduates to volunteer .
But in recent years, such service requirements for academic credit have been implemented in
taxpayer-supported public high schools. After the idea got rolling in the mid-1980s, it was endorsed by
President George Bush and then spread in some form to nearly a quarter of all public U.S. high schools,
according to the Educational Research Service.
“To make a contribution to the community, and learning from that contribution, helps one to become a
lifelong learner,” says Maryland Superintendent of Schools Nancy S. Grasmick, whose state in 1992 became
the first to make community service a graduation requirement.
An idea that sounds rosy in theory, however, is not without its thorns. Maryland recently reported that of the
program's first group affected by the new requirement, the Class of '97, nearly 5,000 seniors, or 40 percent
statewide, have yet to fulfill the minimum number of hours.
What's more, several conservative political and legal groups have challenged the program on constitutional
grounds, using the same arguments many use against community-service requirements for convicts and pro
bono work that some attorneys are required to perform. Some parents warn that the program is unfair to
lower-income students who already have after-school jobs.
“The assumption is often made that if something is good for some it must be good for all, and should be
practiced by all,” says a spokesman for the National Center for Effective Secondary Schools, which has
studied teen service. “Service freely entered into may not even be the same thing, nor have the same effect,
as service mandated by a higher authority, which calls up the image of reluctant teenagers trudging
resentfully through their service assignment.”
In Chapel Hill, N.C., the parents of two students sued the local Board of Education to challenge the schools'
service requirement, citing the 13th Amendment's ban on involuntary servitude. A federal appeals court in
North Carolina this July upheld the school district. “Freedom from compulsory charitable service is not
among the rights” identified by courts, said the 4th Circuit judges. “More importantly, the
community-service requirement is in no way comparable to the horrible injustice of human slavery.” The
Institute for Justice, a conservative group in Washington, filed an appeal with the Supreme Court in
November.
In the volunteer community, graduation requirements for service draw mixed reviews. “I have no
problem with a law firm requiring its attorneys to do pro bono work because the lawyers can choose whether
to work there,” says University of Texas history Professor Marvin Olasky. “But high school students? The
question is, are they getting a good education academically? Will they start doing other things instead?”
Harris L. Wofford, CEO of the Corporation for National Service, which sponsors AmeriCorps, says he would
back the idea if he were on a local school board. “All Catholic and prep schools require it, and you can
connect service with the curriculum, so that students are not just talking about civics and reading the
Constitution, but they're going out and doing civics and citizenship,” he says. Wofford does not, however,
favor Congress stepping into a local education issue and mandating community service requirements
nationwide.
“I don't think coerced volunteerism works,” says Princeton University social scientist Julian Wolpert. “It is a
good idea to train students to live civically in society where others' needs are important, but a better
approach is to recruit the best students or the most athletic students to serve as examples.”
About the same percentage of schools that require volunteerism have programs that merely encourage it, says
Virginia Hodgkinson, vice president for research at Independent Sector. “And giving students a chance to
volunteer through a course they're taking is not the same as requiring it.”
[1] Utne Reader, May-June 1996, p. 14.
[2] The Washington Post, Sept. 25, 1996.
[3] Quoted in Jill K. Cunningham, “What You Can Do For Your Country,” Alternatives in Philanthropy, Capital Research
Center, August 1992.
[4] For background, see The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 25, 1996, p. 14.
Strategies for Mobilizing Suburban Volunteers
As America has suburbanized, so has its philanthropy. For decades, lifestyles built around well-tended lawns
and detached tranquility have moved the nation's affluence outside its urban centers, creating distance
between the pool of most likely volunteers and their urban clients and organizations.
“Donors generally target their contributions on their own communities,” notes Julian Wolpert, a professor at
Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. “Thus, only about 10
percent of charitable contributions are directed to the poor, and most charities lack the mechanisms to
reallocate donations where they are needed most.”
'
Increasingly, however, urban activists are arriving at new strategies for tapping into suburban volunteers.
“Clever organizations are offering flexible time, so instead of having the same person come to the same event
every week, they split it among two or three,” says Virginia Hodgkinson, vice president for research at
Independent Sector. “Parents who have kids in Girl Scouts already know this.”
The problem of how to lure suburbanites from backyard cookouts to needy neighborhoods may be a question
of assuring their personal safety, says Marvin Olasky, author of The Tragedy of American Compassion. “If you
approach a person in the suburbs and simply say, 'Go to this inner-city area at this time to meet these
people,' they won't respond,” he says. “But if you say, 'Here's a group of us who work in this area, and we're
an organization that's been around for a while, let's go together in a van during daylight and meet these
people,' quite a few will be willing to come and then come back.”
One group that has demonstrated a shrewd ability to turn out suburban volunteers is The Reading Connection,
a children's literacy organization based in Arlington, Va. Founded in 1989 with 10 volunteers, the group
schedules volunteers to read aloud to children at homeless shelters and shelters for battered women. “It's
based on something people do naturally with their own children or grandchildren,” says organization
Chairwoman Beth Reese, a mother of three and former teacher who spent seven years as the group's unpaid
executive director. “Because so many of these children have never been read to, it opens the world of books
to them in a way that is so real, so right, so basic.”
Growing by word-of-mouth and through business and nonprofit donations, the Connection now mobilizes 450
volunteers - and a paid director - serving seven Northern Virginia shelters, some discreetly operating in
residential areas. “Many of our volunteers at first are shocked to learn that there are homeless children in
their neighborhood,” Reese says. Unlike the generation-to-generation poverty of many inner-city poor, she
adds, the suburban homeless are often middle-class people who faced a marital, health or job crisis and
exhausted their network of friends and extended families.
When confronting such people “living on the edge,” potential volunteers often feel overwhelmed, Reese says.
“The initial call is answered by the volunteer because that's part of being human. But many get
discouraged or even depressed because it all seems so big and distant, particularly if they don't already
belong to a church or work with an organization.”
The key to attracting volunteers, Reese says, is to offer a range of opportunities. “Some people are
affiliation-motivated, meaning they like belonging to a group. Some are more achievement-motivated,
meaning they want a task with a beginning, middle and end. They would prefer to work at home maintaining
our database or sewing the welcome bags [for the books, paper and crayons that are given to the children].
Then there are those who are power-oriented, meaning that they are ready for more responsibility.”
Training for The Reading Connection is completed after a single session, and the once-a-month commitment
can be fulfilled conveniently in the evening. Burnout and apathy, says Reese, can be averted “if people are
given the right job and are given the resources to do it. If the commitment is hard to get to, if the volunteers
are not scheduled right, if they feel they don't have the needed skills, then what may look like apathy” could
actually be frustration.
“People don't want to be pressured by guilt,” Reese says. But once a
volunteer
is involved, the work
“brings out the best of human nature, and people find a side of someone they never knew about. Many
volunteers learn that they are helping children who may be in their own children's school. They call to thank
us for helping them find something that was missing between the carpool and the job.”
[1] Julian Wolpert, “What Charity Can and Cannot Do,” report from the Twentieth Century Fund, February 1996, p. 19.
Does Trend Toward Bowling Alone Really Mean Civic Ethic is Dying?
The 80 million Americans who go bowling every year are taking time for some recreation, not making
statements about civic involvement. But last year, they became a metaphor for a lively debate in the
political and volunteer communities.
It began when Robert D. Putnam, a professor of international affairs at Harvard University, published
“Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital.” His research and polling data from the past three
decades pointed to a dramatic drop in the membership of civic, recreational and educational organizations.
For example, membership in the PTA fell from 12 million in 1964 to 5 million in 1982, before inching up;
women's club membership dropped by more than 59 percent since 1964; Elks Clubs are off by 18 percent
since 1979; Boy Scouts are down 26 percent since 1970; and the number of Americans bowling in leagues
decreased by 40 percent between 1980 and 1993.
According to Putnam, such signs of “civic disengagement” threaten the quality of public life and the
performance of social insti- tutions. Society's progress in such areas as education, urban poverty,
unemploy-ment, crime and health care, he argues, depends on “norms and networks of civic engagement.”
Such “dense networks of interaction probably broaden the participants' sense of self, developing the 'I' into a
'we,' or [enhance] the participants' 'taste' for collective benefits,” he writes.
Putnam's thesis drew positive reactions from President Clinton and from many in the press, particularly
among a cohort of politically liberal baby-boomers perhaps eager to preserve the social activism they recall
from the 1960s.
But soon an array of critics weighed in. Many took issue with Putnam's numbers, arguing with his
interpretations of the General Social Survey taken by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research
Center.
The theory is “mostly bunk,” wrote syndicated economics columnist Robert Samuelson. Only in
church-related organizations is membership dramatically down, he notes, while the same survey shows that
membership in sports clubs, fraternities and hobbies has actually grown. Besides, Samuelson argues,
Putnam's touted “community” of the past “was more compartmentalized and less compassionate than
today's. Blacks were segregated in schools and jobs. Most married women stayed at home. There was little
federal 'safety net' for the old and poor.”
Other critics added examples of increased citizen involvement. There was a Gallup Poll showing that
attendance at school board meetings rose from 16 percent in 1969 to 39 percent in 1995. There was a report
from the Amateur Softball Association that the number of softball teams participating in leagues has grown
from 19,000 to 261,000 since 1967. Pollsters such as Roper's Everett Ladd argue that while voter turnout (49
percent in November) is certainly down, philanthropy and volunteering has been rising for a decade and a
half. “Civic engagement isn't disappearing but reinventing itself,” wrote Richard Stengel of Time magazine.
Finally, Putnam's implicit call for government to reconnect America's citizenry has grated against political
conservatives. Because of their emphasis on individualism, freedom and the desire to preserve volunteerism
that arises “naturally,” many conservatives reject Putnam's implication that government and any of its
offshoots are automatically worthy of a citizen's trust.
“Any discussion of civic engagement is necessarily riddled with value judgments about whether a particular
activity is a good form of membership, a bad form of trust, or whatever,” writes Hudson Institute researcher
John Clark. “Measures taken to enhance civic engagement could well backfire and serve only to increase
tendencies toward the fragmentation of American society by strengthening communities of narrow interest,
ethnicity and religion.”
Putnam offers a potpourri of possible explanations for the putative decline in civic connection: the
distractions of television (and the VCR); the movement of women into the work force; the increased mobility
of American families; the rise in divorce; the takeover of local small businesses by impersonal conglomerates;
and the retirement of the civic-minded generation that came together to win World War II.
But his message about a role for government is loud and clear. “Past initiatives such as the county
agriculture-agent system, community colleges and tax deductions for charitable contributions illustrate that
government can encourage social-capital formation,” he says. “Even a recent proposal in San Luis Obispo,
Calif., to require that all new houses have front porches illustrates the power of the government to influence
where and how networks are formed.”
Many who work for volunteer organizations are inclined toward the “bowling alone” thesis. Indeed, fully
90 percent of volunteer leaders surveyed by the Points of Light Foundation last July agreed that many
social problems are a direct result of disintegration and disconnection among people and their communities.
“Many of the attacks on Putnam were petty, from people picking at him over the numbers,” says Harris L.
Wofford, CEO of the Corporation for National Service. “His fundamental point is still important, that with
women in the work force, things in the volunteer sector have gotten more complicated.”
Virginia Hodgkinson, vice president for research at Independent Sector, a Washington-based coalition that
supports voluntary action, says: “Putnam hit on the pulse of Americans who are seeking meaning in
community. This comes in cycles. And while we have not seen a decline in the volunteer sector, there is
a clear disconnect in the political process as seen in the absence of campaign participation. One reason we've
seen the volunteer sector strengthening is because that is an area where people's contributions have
demonstrated meaning.”
Putnam himself says he has learned a great deal from his critics' reactions, and though he issued one small
correction on a set of numbers, he stands by his overall thesis. “I still feel passionate about the underlying
issue of what we can do to encourage a rebirth of civic engagement,” he says.
Whether or not civic engagement had faded, a Time-CNN Poll last July showed that 77 percent of Americans
wish they could have more contact with other members of their community.
And in November, following a presidential election in which turnout sank to the lowest level since 1924, a new
bipartisan commission was launched by retiring Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., and former Education Secretary
William J. Bennett to study civic indifference. With $1 million from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the National
Commission on Civic Renewal will spend the next year taking the measure of “our social fabric,” cataloging
civic initiatives nationwide and making recommendations for enhancing civic life.
The commission will be directed by William Galston, a University of Maryland public policy professor and
former Clinton White House official, who expressed concern about the “noticeable drop in Americans' trust in
government and each other” in the past 30 years.
[1] Robert D. Putnam,
“Bowling Alone:
America's Declining
Social Capital,” Journal
of Democracy, Vol. 6,
No. 1, January 1995, p.
65.
[2] See Nicholas
Lemann, “Kicking in
Groups: Alleged Decline
of America's Communal
Capital,” The Atlantic
Monthly, April 1, 1996. p.
22.
[3] Robert Samuelson,
“Harvard Scholar Misses
the Point of 'Real Life,' ”
Chicago Tribune, April
12, 1996.
[4] Richard Stengel,
“Bowling Together,” Time,
July 22, 1996, p. 35.
[5] John Clark, “Shifting
Engagements: Lessons
from the 'Bowling Alone'
Debate,” Hudson Briefing
Report, October 1996, p.
12.
[6] Robert D. Putnam,
“Tuning in, Tuning Out:
The Strange Disappearance of Social Capital in America,” PS: Political Science and Politics, December 1995, pp.
664-665.
[7] Journal of Democracy, op. cit.
Who Are America's Volunteers
Americans who are college-educated, white, middle-aged, married and high-earners are most likely to
volunteer , according to a recent survey. Nearly three-quarters of the respondents who went to college said
they volunteer compared with about a third of those who didn't go past high school.
Demographic Percentage of group
characteristic who volunteered All respondents 49% Gender
Male 45%
Female 52% Race
White 52%
Non-White 36%
Black 35%
Hispanic 40% Age
18-24 38%
25-34 51%
35-44 55%
45-54 55%
55-64 48%
65-74 45%
75+ 34% Income
Under $10,000 35%
$10,000-$19,999 34%
$20,000-$29,999 45%
$30,000-$39,999 46%
$40,000-$49,999 53%
$50,000-$74,999 60%
$75,000-$99,999 65%
$100,000 and over 69% Religion
Catholic 49%
Protestant 49%
Other 58%
None 40% Marital status
Married 56%
Single 40%
Divorced, separated, widowed 41% Education
High school or less 36%
Technical, trade school or some college
54%
College graduate 71% Source: Survey for Independent Sector conducted by The Gallup Organization, May
4-June 16, 1996.
Falling PTA Membership
The decline in National PTA membership since 1962 reflects the“ civic disengagement” that Harvard
University Professor Robert Putnam sees in American society.
(in millions) '57 10.7 '58 11 '59 11.9 '60 12.1 '61 12.1 '62 12.1 '63 12 '64 11.8 '65 11.7 '66 11 '67 10.7 '68 10.2 '69
9.7 '70 9.2 '71 8.6 '72 8.2 '73 7.7 '74 7.1 '75 6.6 '76 6.4 '77 6.3 '78 6.2 '79 6.1 '80 5.9 '81 5.3 '82 5.3 '83 5.4 '84
5.6 '85 5.8 '86 6.2 '87 6.5 '88 6.6 '89 6.9 '90 7 '91 6.8 '92 6.8 '93 6.7 '94 6.8 '95 6.5 Source: National PTA
Bibliography
Books
Coles, Robert , The Call of Service: A Witness to Idealism, Houghton Mifflin, 1993. A noted Harvard
University psychiatrist and children's advocate recalls his lifetime experiences as a volunteer and civil
rights worker, examining such issues as “burnout” and the portrayal of volunteerism in literature.
Mirabai Bush , Compassion in Action: Setting Out on the Path of Service, Crown, 1992. A Harvard
University psychiatrist-turned-meditation guru teamed up with the head of an international service
foundation to write this essay on the meaning of volunteerism in humanity's search for identity.
Garr, Robin , Reinvesting in America: The Grassroots Movements That Are Feeding the Hungry,
Housing the Homeless and Putting Americans Back to Work, Addison-Wesley, 1995. A Kentucky
journalist-turned-anti-hunger activist traveled the country to profile dozens of local volunteer groups
working in food pantries, job training programs and drug and alcohol counseling.
Himmelfarb, Gertrude , Poverty and Compassion: The Moral Imagination of the Late Victorians, Alfred
A. Knopf, 1991. A historian at the City University of New York examines the role of charity, social conditions
and moral attitudes in 19th-century England, arguing for Victorian-style compassion as a model for modern
volunteer efforts to instill character and self-sufficiency in the needy.
Mosher, Bill , Visionaries: A Companion to the Public Television Series, Orbis Books, 1995. A television
producer and active volunteer profiles people who committed themselves to hunger relief, anti-poverty
work and comfort for the dying both in and outside the United States.
Moskos, Charles , A Call to Civic Service: National Service for Country and Community, The Free Press,
1988. A Northwestern University sociologist and longtime student of the U.S. military outlined his proposal
for a national service program before the Clinton administration pushed through AmeriCorps.
Olasky, Marvin , The Tragedy of American Compassion, Regnery, 1992. A professor of history and
journalism at the University of Texas caught the attention of House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., with this
history of American charity and volunteerism. He argues for direct involvement between volunteers and the
needy rather than cash payments from government or nonprofit bureaucracies.
Salamon, Lester M. , Partners in Public Service: Government- Nonprofit Relations in the Modern
Welfare State, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. A Johns Hopkins University policy professor
examines cooperation between government and nonprofits in addressing social problems, arguing against
current proposals to dismantle much of government's contribution.
Verba, Sidney , Kay Lehman Schlozman and Henry E. Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in
American Politics, Harvard University Press, 1995. Political scientists from Harvard University, Boston
College and the University of California at Berkeley provide mounds of data in this effort to examine why
Americans get interested in politics, charities, affinity groups and volunteer organizations. They discuss
the quality of each type of experience, arguing that politics allows the least amount of active participation.
Reports and Studies
Wolpert, Julian , What Charity Can and Cannot Do, Twentieth Century Fund, February 1996. The
conservative argument for defunding government social services and turning them over to charity is made for
ideological rather than practical reasons, argues a professor at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public
and International Affairs. Government is needed, he says, to bridge the geographical mismatch between
needs and available resources.
The Next Step
Periodical Abstracts Database (for further research)
AmeriCorps Program
“Any volunteers?” The Economist, Jan. 21, 1995, p. 32. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., has made
his attack on government personal by going after President Clinton's pet program, AmeriCorps. While
Gingrich views AmeriCorps as coerced voluntarism, Clinton sees it as reward for good work.
Cheakalos, Christina , “Volunteers put spark in eyes of children,” Atlanta Constitution, April 26, 1995,
p. B1. Volunteers at Benteen Elementary, near the Atlanta federal penitentiary in Grant Park, are members
of AmeriCorps, President Clinton's domestic version of the Peace Corps. In the nine months they've spent at
the school, AmeriCorps volunteers have painted huge, multicultural murals and quilts, built reading lofts in
each of the first-grade classrooms, planted flowers, started gardens and chased hookers and drug dealers
from an adjacent park.
Hamber, Fredric , “AmeriCorps' 'paid volunteers',” San Francisco Chronicle, July 27, 1995, p. A21.
Hamber contends that Congress should abolish AmeriCorps and says that needing to justify one's life by
performing altruistic acts is a distinctly un-American notion.
Johnson, Stephen , “ Volunteer work becomes priority,” Houston Chronicle, Dec. 29, 1995, p.
A34. Midway through his 10-month tour of volunteer duty with the federal AmeriCorps program,
Houstonian Daniel Sanborn, an honors student, has remained enthusiastic about interrupting his academic
career to help his country.
Katz, Nancie L. , “AmeriCorps program boosts needy volunteers,” Atlanta Journal Constitution, Nov.
26, 1995, p. D3. Katz comments on the impact AmeriCorps volunteers have had on communities such as
Atlanta in light of congressional Republicans' efforts to eliminate the program.
Sanchez, Rene , “It's ' volunteer ' service, but what does it cost?” The Washington Post, July 20,
1995, p. A25. Few government programs have faced as many skeptical questions from the GOP as
AmeriCorps, President Clinton's national service initiative. The battle over how to figure out exactly what it
costs to give the 20,000 AmeriCorps members a minimum-wage salary and up to $9,500 for college tuition in
exchange for the 1,700 hours of community service work they perform is discussed.
Sekhar, Anjali J. , “Volunteers help 'Make a Difference' for a day,” Detroit News Free Press, Oct. 27,
1996, p. B1. In Detroit, local organizations and Michigan neighborhood AmeriCorps program volunteers
participated in the Oct. 26, 1996,6th annual National Make a Difference Day. Sponsored by USA Weekend
magazine, the event encourages volunteer work in the community.
Walters, John P. , “Don't call them volunteers,” The New York Times, Feb. 10, 1996, p. A23. Walters
discusses what he views as the failings of President Clinton's AmeriCorps national service program, and
contends that the program has shown itself, in the year and a half of its existence, to be everything that is
wrong with big government.
Zagaroli, Lisa , “Schools, families count on Americorps volunteers,” Detroit News Free Press, March
12, 1995, p. B1. The value of the AmeriCorps program is discussed as Congress begins debate on whether
the federal government should fund programs offered by AmeriCorps, President Clinton's national service
project.
Volunteering as an Academic Requirement
Bacon-Blood, Littice , “Mandatory volunteerism earns both A's, F's,” New Orleans Times-Picayune,
April 1, 1996, p. A1. Community service as a graduation requirement in St. John the Baptist and Jefferson
parishes in Louisiana is part of a growing national trend. Supporters and opponents express their thoughts on
the idea.
Bunce, Alan , “Mandatory volunteering: An oxymoron or a valuable lesson?” The Christian Science
Monitor, April 26, 1996, p. 11. Volunteerism in high school is a longstanding tradition, but a contentious
aspect of it is being debated around the country in 1996: mandatory community service.
Hayes, Karen , “In a growing number of schools, volunteerism is making the grade,” The Boston
Globe, Feb. 19, 1995p. SW1. Despite a spate of lawsuits nationally over what some call compulsory
volunteerism, administrators in public school systems in southern Massachusetts are leaning toward required
community service for their students.
Hlotke, Suzanne G. , “College orientation steers students to volunteerism,” Chicago Tribune, Sept.
11, 1995, p. D3. The 330 freshmen at North Central College in Naperville, Ill., took part in a one-day
program, “Into the Streets,” working at 18 different sites in the Naperville area, as well as a few in Chicago,
doing some heavy lifting, a little painting and some outdoor maintenance.
Kirka, Danica , “Requiring volunteer work defeats the purpose,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 4, 1995,
p. B7. Comments are provided from Southern California students on a move by some area high schools to
require at least a few hours of community volunteer work as a requirement for graduation.
Shen, Fern , “Md. students are failing to volunteer ,” The Washington Post, Sept. 25, 1996, p. D3.
The first class of high school students obligated to meet Maryland's community service requirement is
approaching graduation. According to a state progress report, which places Montgomery County among the
jurisdictions with the highest numbers of students in danger of not receiving diplomas, nearly 5,000 seniors
are far from meeting their “service learning” goal by late September 1996.
Nonprofits' Response to Welfare Reform
Brunner, Lincoln , “States, nonprofits shoulder welfare-reform burden,” Christianity Today, Feb. 5,
1996, pp. 100-101. Wisconsin has a plan that would restructure welfare systems by requiring all
able-bodied participants to work in order to receive benefits.
Sirico, Robert A. , “Putting private charity back into welfare,” Detroit News Free Press, May 28, 1995,
p. B3. Sirico says the nation's largest non-profit groups are lobbying Washington, D.C,. with the goal of
scuttling the shift from government welfare to the private sector, adding that the welfare lobby offers false
choices.
Souder, Mark E. , “Make giving less taxing,” The Wall Street Journal, July 10, 1995, p. A14. Rep.
Souder, R-Ind., comments on welfare reform, suggesting that the real answer to the problem may be private
charities and other nonprofit organizations. Souder says he has introduced the Giving Incentive and
Volunteer Empowerment Act, which would expand tax code incentives to give and encourage more
volunteer involvement in private relief efforts.
“The dependent sector,” Detroit News, June 30, 1995, p. A8. An editorial states that any effort to “end
welfare as we know it” must resurrect the principles of independence and responsibility, which guided
fraternal societies, adding that to do so will be impossible while government-funded charities with a vested
interest in perpetuating themselves stay in business.
Williams, Bett A. , “Positive steps,” Atlanta Journal Constitution, Jan. 22, 1995, p. B6. In a letter to
the editor, Williams of Support To Employment Project Inc., suggests that the public should instruct
Congress to consult nonprofit organizations that have been working through job training programs to break
down the barriers that poverty imposes, rather than place emphasis on “welfare” reform.
Volunteering in the U.S.
Bryant, Kathryn A. , “Volunteering is good citizenship,” Michigan Chronicle, April 5, 1995, p. A9.
Bryant discusses the benefits of volunteering and comments that corporate America is demonstrating a solid
commitment to volunteerism, stating that big companies are gaining an understanding of the relationship
between corporate strength and corporate citizenship.
Ditmer, Joanne , “America's volunteer spirit is alive and well in Colorado,” Denver Post, April 7,
1996, p. D1. Ditmer discusses the extent of volunteerism in the U.S. in general and in Colorado in particular.
Gardner, Marilyn , “Families find unity volunteering together,” The Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 9,
1995, p. 1. A growing movement across the U.S. in 1995 involves entire families volunteering together. By
including children and teenagers, parents are instilling a sense of community responsibility and enjoying
family time together.
Krieger, Gary F. , “Volunteerism - it's the 'in' thing - but will it work?” American Medical News, Feb.
20, 1995, p. 17. Thousands of doctors volunteer their efforts in political campaigns to make their
voices heard in shaping public policy. Whether this wave of physician volunteerism will have an impact is
discussed.
Lee, Henry K. , “Legions of volunteers serve holiday feasts to the needy,” San Francisco Chronicle,
Dec. 26, 1995, p. A18. Christmas cheer and good tidings were plentiful on Dec. 25, 1995, as churches, soup
kitchens and community groups throughout the Bay Area served holiday meals to thousands of homeless and
needy families.
O'Connor, James V. , “Volunteers ever vigilant to peril on the Hudson,” The New York Times, Jan.
28, 1996, p. WC1. The United States Volunteer Life Saving Corps has rescued people from sinking
boats, put out fires and dragged the muddy river bottoms for drowning victims since 1870. Volunteers from
New York's Yonkers district are described.
Puckett, Patti , “Fewer volunteers aid shelters for homeless,” Atlanta Constitution, Nov. 15, 1995, p.
B1. The pool of people willing to work at night at homeless shelters is shrinking. This problem is so serious at
two metro Atlanta shelters, the Central Night Shelter downtown and the Holy Trinity Shelter in Decatur, Ga.,
that organizers say the shelters may be forced to shut down.
Contacts
Capital Research Center
727 15th St. N.W., Suite 800, Washington, D.C. 20005
(202) 393-2600.
This conservative, nonprofit center analyzes foundation activities and publishes newsletters reporting on
issues affecting charities and volunteering.
Corporation for National Service
1201 New York Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20525
(202) 606-5000.
Created in 1993 to administer the AmeriCorps program, this agency took over the existing government
volunteer programs known as ACTION and the National Civilian Community Corps. It also administers the
Learn and Serve program for college volunteers and the National Senior Service Corps.
Independent Sector
1828 L St. N.W., Suite 1200, Washington, D.C. 20036
(202) 223-8100.
This coalition of corporations and voluntary, charitable and philanthropic organizations promotes
nonprofit-sector activities through research and advocacy.
The New Citizenship Project
1150 17th St. N.W., Suite 510, Washington, D.C. 20036
(202) 822-8333.
Chaired by conservative political strategist William Kristol, this advocacy group offers sustained criticism of
the “failures” of governmental efforts to solve problems of poverty, crime and poor-quality education,
promoting instead citizen-led alternatives.
Youth Service America
1101 15th St. N.W., Suite 200, Washington, D.C. 20005.
(202) 296-2992 Internet:
http://www.SERVEnet.org
Founded in 1988, this alliance of organizations committed to community development and national service
coordinates projects that help young people get involved in service to towns and cities.
Footnotes
[1] For background, see “The Homeless,” The CQ Researcher, Aug. 7, 1992, pp. 675-698, and “Parents and Schools,”
The CQ Researcher, Jan. 20, 1995, pp. 49-72.
[2] Annual survey of nonprofits by The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Oct. 31, 1996, p. 1. For background, see “Charitable
Giving,” The CQ Researcher, Nov. 12, 1993, pp. 985-1008; and “National Service,” The CQ Researcher, June 15, 1993,
pp. 553-576.
[3] Higher Education Research Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, “The American Freshman: National Norms
for Fall 1995,” December 1995. In addition, a 1996 study by Independent Sector found that the total number of teenagers
ages 12-17 volunteering in the U.S. increased by 7 percent between 1992 and 1996, from 12.4 million to 13.3 million.
[4] American Demographics, June 1996, p. 4.
[5] Ram Dass and Mirabai Bush, Compassion in Action: Setting Out on the Path of Service (1992), p. 5.
[6] Quoted in The Washington Post, Oct. 21, 1996, p. B4.
[7] Quoted in The New Yorker, Oct. 21/28, 1996, p. 180.
[8] Column in The Washington Post, Oct. 24, 1996.
[9] Quoted in Time, June 3, 1996, p. 24.
[10] Los Angeles Times, Nov. 15, 1996, p. B2.
[11] Virginia Hodgkinson, Thomas H. Pollak and Lester M. Salamon, “The Impact of Federal Budget Proposals Upon the
Activities of Charitable Organizations and the People They Serve, 1996-2002: The 100 Nonprofit Organizations Study,”
Independent Sector, June 15, 1995, p. 3.
[12] Jeremy Rifkin, The End of Work (1995), p. 263.
[13] Grassley spoke in the Senate, April 3, 1995.
[14] Julian Wolpert, “What Charity Can and Cannot Do,” Twentieth Century Fund Report, February 1996, p. 18.
[15] For details, see “Welfare, Work and the States,” The CQ Researcher, Dec. 6, 1996, pp. 1057-1080
[16] For background, see “The Working Poor,” The CQ Researcher, Nov. 3, 1995, pp. 969-992.
[17] The Chronicle of Philanthropy, May 16, 1996. p. 44.
[18] Wolpert, op. cit., p. 29.
[19] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1969 edition), edited by J.P. Mayer, pp. 512-513.
[20] Gertrude Himmelfarb, Poverty and Compassion (1991), p. 4.
[21] Marvin Olasky, The Tragedy of American Compassion (1992), p. 219.
[22] Quoted in Daniel T. Oliver, “Restoring American Voluntarism,” Alternatives in Philanthropy, March 1994. Cornuelle's
book was reissued in 1993, as the debate on national service got under way.
[23] Robert Coles, The Call of Service: A Witness to Idealism (1993), p. xxv.
[24] Emmett Grogan, Ringolevio (1990), p. 301.
[25] Bill Mosher, Visionaries: A Companion to the Public Television Series (1995), p. 113.
[26] American Red Cross, “Taking Volunteerism into the 21st Century,” March 1990.
[27] Robert D. Putnam, “Tuning in, Tuning Out: The Strange Disappearance of Social Capital in America,” PS: Political
Science and Politics, December 1995, pp. 664-665.
[28] Lester M. Salamon, Partners in Public Service: Government- Nonprofit Relations in the Modern Welfare State (1995),
p. 136.
[29] Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman and Henry E. Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American
Politics (1995), p. 334.
[30] “Adrift in Uptopia,” Philanthropy, Culture and Society, Capital Research Center, November 1993.
[31] Jessica Gavora, “P.C. Corps,” Heterodoxy, February 1996, Vol. 4, No. 2, published by the Center for the Study of
Popular Culture, Los Angeles, Calif.
[32] See U.S. General Accounting Office, “National Service Programs: AmeriCorps USA - Early Program Resource and
Benefit Information,” August 1995.
[33] David Boaz, “Expensive Solutions,” op-ed, The Washington Post, Sept. 27, 1996.
[34] The Washington Post, Nov. 15, 1996.
[35] The New York Times, “Education Life” section, Nov. 3, 1996, p. 7.
[36] James Michener, “Will the U.S. Prevail?” Parade, Oct. 27, 1996, p. 6.
[37] Carolyn See, writing in The Washington Post, Nov. 8, 1996.
[38] Dass and Bush, op. cit., p. 226.
Document Citation
Clark, C. S. (1996, December 13). The new volunteerism. CQ Researcher, 6, 1081-1104. Retrieved February 11, 2008,
from CQ Researcher Online, http://0-library.cqpress.com.janus.uoregon.edu:80/cqresearcher/cqresrre1996121300.
Document ID: cqresrre1996121300
Document URL: http://0-library.cqpress.com.janus.uoregon.edu:80/cqresearcher/cqresrre1996121300
The CQ Researcher • December 13, 1996 • Volume 6, Number 46
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