Nope -- still true, at least for the larger organizations. They have their ways and they don't use volunteers to the best advantage -- I don't mean skill set, but mean that they don't train/supervise properly to get the best result.
-- Rita
The article is still dead on unfortunately. Frankly, volunteering has been one of the few disappointments about retirement. While my arrogance level wasn't quite as absurd as some of the people in the article, I did hope to find some volunteer activity that was intellectually stimulating. After 10 years of half-heartily looking I have concluded that they are very hard to find. Volunteer jobs which utilize your unique skills require more dedication than I am willing to put in. Although they are out there.
I have volunteered with six different organizations and investigated a couple of others, but I am far from an expert in the field. Still in my experience the fundamental problem is that organization treat volunteers in generic fashion. For the most part organization have a few specific tasks for volunteers; pet, groom, fed animals; paint, put up dry wall; tutor adults/kids in reading; give guided tours; answer questions; perform administrative task; dispense food; sell thrift clothes etc. These tasks require no or minimal prior experience. Hence you often see high school students performing their required community activity, along side senior citizens with 50 years of experience in the field.
Now good organizations have formal training programs to ensure a uniform base level of knowledge or skill. While I did learn something in all of the training programs I have been in, it is not uncommon for a volunteer in training to have far more expertise than the teacher. This expertise is often not only not appreciated but in some cases viewed as a threat.
I have enjoyed the specific volunteer jobs I've done, which for the most part involve interacting with visitors and acting as a guide. However, the jobs become repetitious quickly and much of the enjoyment comes from interacting with fellow volunteers and the paid staff. There is very little opportunity for growth, or variety.
There are exceptions; I have seen situations where volunteers end up with a wide range of responsibilities. For instance at the aviation museum, volunteers are in charge of IT, fund raising, much of the historical research and aircraft restoration, in addition to the traditional roles as museum docents. The downside is when they have the volunteer appreciation ceremonies (I attended one last night) these dedicated folks put in 800-2000 hours a year, which is more like a 1/2 to full time job.
So we end up in a catch 22 situation. Organizations are understandably reluctant to entrust volunteers with positions of responsibility because they have no means of controlling them, you can't insist they the work overtime until the jobs is done because you can't fire them nor cut their pay! Nor is reasonable for volunteers to expect organization to entrust them with "strategic" responsibility simply on the strength of their resumes.
Hence, volunteers are required to start at the ground level as a candy stripper before gaining access to more interesting jobs. However, not many people are willing to devote more than one day a week to a candy stripper activity. I think this is why I see very few Baby Boomers as volunteers.
I have heard that in Silicon Valley some organizations have ended up turning things upside down and use volunteers for the interesting strategic jobs, and hiring people to stuff envelopes etc... I am not seeing that spread at least in Hawaii.
But I hung in there.
I did, but it was white knuckle all the way.
