Volunteers In Nonprofit Organizations

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 62.8 people volunteered through or for an organization at least once between September 2013 and September 2014. Volunteers are an important part of the nonprofit community. Almost all organizations started with an idea and the hard work of one or two people. Many organizations operate solely with volunteers. Others use volunteers to expand their programming efforts. Volunteers are of huge value to the labor force for many nonprofit organizations. Recent studies estimate that about a hundred million people volunteer each year with an annual value in the range of $150 billion. Volunteer labor is commonly used to produce many goods and services in our economy. There is a strong demand for volunteer labor because of its relatively low cost and individuals willing to supply unpaid labor. For example, in the United States,

Volunteers can offer guidance and expertise at a high level, hands-on assistance with day-to-day operations, and expand organizational capacity, connections and resources. Today there’s a large pool of volunteer opportunities in the nonprofit organizations. Trained volunteers can be invaluable to an organization in helping to deliver services to clients. They reduce costs through their work and can often provide better services because of their passion for the organization’s mission. According to Pynes (2013), volunteers give support to the employees in meeting their agency’s mission and become an important part of strategic human resources management (SHRM) and planning (p. 377). Without volunteers, most nonprofits would cease to exist or would otherwise suffer a drastic reduction in capacity to serve communities and achieve the mission of the organization. Therefore, it is important that HRM of a nonprofit organization use the SHRM system to manage their