The New Volunteerism Project

The Archival Collection of
Ivan Henry Scheier

Section VII

A Expanding Universe of People Who Can Help
A Fuller Workspace of Community-Building

Introductory Notes on Expanding Universe of People
|Ivan Scheier
June, 1999 

Somewhere in the 1960's, and maybe even earlier, the field of volunteer administration began to focus on structured volunteer programs in agencies, in which volunteers were treated essentially as unpaid staff, with ideals of program process derived mainly from the business/corporate world. (I remain stupefied that the one mode of involvement where money was not the main object, chose to model itself on the mode where it most certainly was!)

In any case, I was one of the early advocates of this focus. If later I came to see it as a cul de sac we needed to get out of, and proceed to crusade, sometimes quite arrogantly, for getting of this box, I need to remember it was a box I helped put us in!

Why a box? The section on philosophy provides my view of that. Essentially, community and society issues require that everyone, not just traditional volunteers in relatively isolated agencies, be involved working together. ( It takes a village to raise a village). Therefore, a major theme of my work, form the midpoint of my career until now, has been increased awareness of all the different kinds of people, working conditions and involvement models that do exist and need to be coordinated with one another for a truly effective attack on community and societal challenges. Let it be said that though I managed to identify, or re-identify a good number of the above-mentioned different people and involvement modes, I barely had time to begin dealing with how they could best work together. (The section on networking is only a small beginning on that)

A secondary theme in this expansion effort has been empowerment of the volunteer coordinator (see Section XII), by encouraging her to acquire the awareness and skills needed to involve and coordinate a wider array of people and involvement models in the work of community-building.

The overall expansion is best expressed in the first 3 items of this packet.

“Exploring Volunteer Space: The Recruiting of a Nation.” © The National Center for Citizen Involvement, Washington, D.C. 1980, 200 pages

Two Linked articles in GRAPEVINE:
“Towards a New Helping Team: An Expansion Checklist.” © Grapevine. July/August 1996. Page 8.
“Volunteer Administration: An Emerging Misnomer.” © Grapevine, Nov/Sec 1996. Page 11.

Three following items express a saturation strategy in the involvement of people to address community challenges.

“Many-To-One: The Surround Strategy, Part I.” © VIP Examiner. Spring 1996. Pages 12-14.
“Many-To-One: The Surround Strategy, Part II”  © VIP Examiner. Summer 1996.
“Shelleyville. Proposal for a Correctional Volunteer Community.” 1989. Six pages in typed manuscript form; 3 pages in slightly abbreviated published form in the Journal of the International Association of Justice Volunteers (IAJV).

Blurring the line between “designated helper” and “designated helpee,” and seeing community more as a place where at one time or another, everyone helps and/or is helped. (At present, this section is composed entirely of cross-references)

– the correctional volunteer community, the just previous enclosed is an example of such blurring...
– See also the section on strengthening entirely or mainly volunteer groups, e.g. neighborhood and/or grassroots groups. (Section X)
– The two sections on networking (Sections VIII, IX) essentially see it as a model for mutuality of assistance between two or more individuals or groups, a “horizontal” rather than a “vertical” model of the helping process.

The “Freelance” Volunteer (or contributor under other conditions), that is, the person who acts largely independent of membership in or affiliation with a group or organization. I sponsored a small interview study designed to determine main characteristics of this freelancer and results of that study will be included, if I can find them!!! There was some attention to volunteers as individuals in the “Exploring Volunteer Space book, previously cited here, and some indications of examples in the book “Meanwhile, Back at the Neighborhood” (Section X). Generally, though, this was the least well developed area in my ‘expansionist’ efforts.

“The Fulltime Freelance Volunteer: A New (?) Social Entrepreneur.” Unpublished two-page outline, 1995.

“Circuit Riders: Proposal for a National Volunteer Clearinghouse.” Six page unpublished proposal, 1988. This never really got off the ground although, along the way, we did discover some roughly similar kinds of programs, e.g. the A”Lamplighter” program of (I believe) the Lutheran Church.

“The Diary of a Gypsy Consultant.” Enclosed here and also in the section on Preparing and Supporting the Work of the Volunteer Coordinator (Section XIII) . Unpublished 9-page report, 1986.

“Pressured Participation and Volunteering: Four Positive and Seven Negative Scenarios” 2-page training handout.

“Helping Fields and Helping Program (Or, Should Corporations Hire Mediators)?” 7-page unpublished essay I’ve always been excited about as a prime example of the kind of possibilities created by challenging and “overturning” deep-seated taken-for-granted assumptions about how help occurs; notably here that it can occur in the form of a field as well as a program.

“Stretching Our Boundaries” 11-pages of training handout summary, hopefully more intelligible once the rest of this section has been read.