Volunteering is a voluntary activity for the benefit of another person, group of people or organization without any remuneration. For the first time, the word volunteer sounded more than 400 years ago. So called volunteer soldiers. Nowadays, it is associated exclusively with charity or gratuitous help to some large-scale endeavor for good. In this article, we will talk about the history of the volunteer movement. We will highlight the acute problems that restrain its development and growth. And finally, we will describe the solution by means of the W12 crowdfunding blockchain platform!
Around 1600: “For glory and booty”
Following the results of the Netherlands revolution and the Thirty Years War, Spain was defeated, and got a hegemon on the throne in the face of France. Then at the turn of the 16–17 centuries, the French word volontaire sounded for the first time as the one who offers himself to military service. These men played a huge role in the war. Soldiers volunteered with their weapons and provisions, they stood under the banner of the lords for glory and future military booty. The Italian volontario, German volontair, British volunteer appear a bit later. Outside the context of military service, volunteers have been known since the 1630s, as they began to be attracted in England to care for cripples and the poor.
1736: The Benjamin Franklin’s Bucket Brigade
Benjamin Franklin, a 30-year-old publisher of “The Pennsylvania Gazette,” wrote a series of articles on how to fight the fires that raged in Philadelphia. 30 men from local townspeople responded to his call. Each of them provided 6 leather buckets (hence the popular nickname of Benjamin Franklin’s Bucket Brigade), two 2 linen bags each (the property saved from the fire was packed there) and the funds for buying the hand-pumped fire engine on wheels. Volunteers pledged to arrive at the scene immediately after the call for help, as some carried water, others protected the fire victims from looters. This is how the Union Fire Company appeared, essentially the first mutual aid association. Its activity did not decrease until the appearance of the professional fire service in 1820.
1820–1830: “The Great Awakening” of volunteers
In the history of American Protestantism, there are four great revivals accompanied by grandiose changes in the political and social life of the country. The second of these was characterized by the emergence of a multitude of aid societies and religious associations that preached “work as zealously as thou believeth.” Millions of Americans have experienced a spiritual ascent. The camp meetings became very popular. As volunteers, they built shelters and churches, collected donations and taught in Sunday schools, fed the poor and guided the migrants. From the middle of the century in the United States, and then around the world, some well-known and still operating non-profit organizations appeared on this basis, such as the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the World Christian Association of Young Women…
1951: Voluntary service in Papua New Guinea
Australia abided its word in the development of the volunteer movement. Bachelor of Melbourne University, Herbert Faith, went to Indonesia for 2 years as a translator. Having mastered local customs and built up a network of contacts, he made an agreement by which Australian graduates could work as Indonesian civil servants. Thus the program for graduate volunteers was born, later reborn as an Australian international volunteer initiative (AVI). The bottom line is that qualified personnel traveled to assist organizations in developing countries, for example, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, and Nigeria. In exchange, the volunteers received airline tickets and insurance, living allowance, and local regional salaries. Over the past 50 years, the AVI has deployed more than 6,000 volunteers in 70 countries.
2006: The birth of microvolunteering
How many can afford to volunteer for months away from home? Most people do not have time, but there is a desire to help. Microvolunteering can be even a couple of minutes at the bus stop. This is an invention of our century. In 2000, the UN website had the opportunity to connect to the implementation of various microtasks that make up a large and useful project for society. This may include sending SMS, mapping the geographical distribution of symptoms of diseases, writing articles and their translations, researching the environment, improving a website’s interface etc. The term microvolunteering itself appeared in 2006. It came from a blogger from the British portal https://www.mysociety.org, and journalists picked it up. Now there is a whole range of micro-volunteer platforms on the internet.
What Are the challenges faced by the volunteer movement?
The problems of the modern volunteer movement are clearly highlighted in numbers the study of McKinley Advisors, in which more than 600 non-profit organizations were surveyed:
● 62% of non-profit organizations do not measure the satisfaction of their volunteers.
● The remaining 38% of non-profit organizations report that satisfaction of 64% of their volunteers is frozen or declining.
● Only 14% of non-profit organizations keep track of how much time a specific volunteer has donated for a good cause.
● Even less than 4% of non-profit organizations calculate the value of this time.
● 31% of non-profit organizations do not have a formal feedback system with volunteers. 53% provide a link when they see fit.
● 79% of non-profit organizations admitted that their practice of tracking volunteer program indicators is mediocre or disastrous.
So what kind of obstacles make it difficult to track and measure this data? Among the most popular answers are lack of staff time (27%) and technology limitations (16%)
The conclusion of the study is logical in that the absence of normal metrics is the most acute problem of the volunteer movement. Its solution will improve the coordination of volunteers and ease their retention in charity projects. Absolutely all non-profit organizations are interested in this.
Now imagine how a volunteer project can be organized with the help of W12
The technological solution that non-profit organizations are looking for to coordinate and retain volunteers already exists, and it is the W12 crowdfunding blockchain platform.
What will the volunteers get?
The volunteers will be able to go through the KYC procedure and get an electronic ID. All information, including their professional skills will be recorded in a distributed ledger. If a volunteer wants to join a charity project, he will be provided access to this data. Also, volunteers will be able to upload all their letters, questionnaires, contracts and thanks. But the most interesting and unusual functionality is the ability to synchronize donated time with the project roadmap and its milestones. That is, a volunteer, having completed a useful action (read about the validation of the roadmap here 1, 2) gets the right to record its description and time in their electronic certificate. These ID certificates will thus become business cards and a portfolio of volunteers. Given the essence of blockchain technology, it will be impossible to fake them or cheat on them.
What will non-profit organizations get?
Non-profit organizations will be able to coordinate the work of volunteers with greater ease and at lower expenses due to the full digitalization and decentralization of all accounting processes. For example, the progress of the work done in parallel and independently is recorded by all participants on the blockchain, while the time donated by each volunteer is recorded as well. Paper workflows are completely absent. There is no single validating authority either. This information cannot be lost, out of sync or forged. Management decisions are made on its basis. Certain indicators can serve as triggers for a self-executing smart contract.
