Volunteers or Employees?

I volunteer at a charity shop for a local hospice which has a number of branches across the area. If we didn't volunteer the organisation could not function. I often find myself doing the job of the paid Manager, opening up the shop, cashing and up and closing the shop. Sometimes I feel it is not right that the organisation relies solely on volunteers for it to function as we do not enjoy the benefits of paid staff but do the same job and more! I feel sorry for my Manager as she has to rely on us volunteers to be able to take leave! I have to do an extra day next week as the Manager wants to take a day's leave. The upside is that I take time off when I chose (giving them notice of course). I'm lucky that my Manager is a good person and is very conscious of what we volunteers do. However, when my son started out in the Media Industry, the only way in was to do work experience, no pay, but doing the same job as his fully paid colleagues. He had to go through this for almost two years. It is so wrong that :businesses as opposed to charities can afford to pay people. It used to make me so angry for him. I think the rules have changed now and there is a fine line between work experience recruitment and minimum wage recruitment. Thank goodness.

By strange coincidence I was having the same conversation with a retired professional gardener friend. I was telling him that I'd just volunteered to help with a community gardening project and he said that in his experience (which may have been the National Trust) volunteers were replacing professional gardeners. However, they needed a trainer to show them how to do the work properly and then you ended up with 2 volunteers working slowly and needing supervision instead of employing a professional who would do the job properly in half the time. He was very fed up with it.

Annsixty, apologies if I read your post wrongly.

I just wanted to say that I volunteer for the WRVS so they are not staffed solely by paid employees. It is now the RVS (the ‘W’ is dropped I think so that men are more inclined to join).

Please do not be put off volunteering for them I know in my area they are always looking out for people to join us.

DH is a volunteer driver for the RVS and really enjoys it but they are a tad disorganised.

I volunteered for WRVS when we first got married and came in very useful as I was the only person in the office who could translate pre decimal prices to the new fangled sort. We used to sell baby milk and orange juice from the office which was up 3 flights of narrow, windy stairs - ideal for new mums with babies.

It has occurred to me that one thing that might help is that there should be something like a Volunteer Charter, setting out what a volunteer should do and how they should be treated. Then organisations could be asked to sign up to it and anyone volunteering with them would know they would be treated fairly. Any ideas for what should go in it? I think maybe something about not being replacements for paid staff?

I think there are different reasons for volunteering. Some people do it to gain experience volunteers.in a particular field. I think it reasonable to ask for a commitment and to do it like paid work. At some point they will be asking for a reference. For others, and probably a lot of Gransnetters, it is about doing somethin useful for others. There are a lot of organisations that have role for volunteers which are specifically designed for volunteers. They do not have the responsibilities of paid employees and are flexible about hour etc

As a Volunteer Coordinator for a small charity I am appalled at the way some of you have been treated. Volunteering should be a rewarding experience. If you are not happy I suggest you move on to a charity that will appreciate your time and skills.

We have a lot of students who volunteer for experience but they often disappear again quite quickly!

HillyN, I too have started to help year 2 children with their reading at one of our local schools. Only been with them couple of weeks ago and am loving it. I was put in contact with them via RSVP (government organization) who were looking for volunteers of 50+ years. I strongly recommend to anyone looking to offer a few hours in any one of the fields they offer on their website.

HillyN, I too have started to help year 2 children with their reading at one of our local schools. Only been with them couple of weeks ago and am loving it. I was put in contact with them via RSVP (government organization) who were looking for volunteers of 55+ years. I strongly recommend to anyone looking to offer a few hours in any one of the fields they offer on their website. www.nationalservice.gov/programs/senior-corps/senior-corps-programs/rsvp

Oh. It's in America.
The charity I volunteer at has a well organised volunteer Co ordinator and expectations are quite clear. I feel appreciated but left to get on with the job. Suits me!

I feel that some volunteer 'opportunities' should not be volunteers. I give anything useful to charity shops, and routinely buy from them too, as do my friends n family. So on what basis do they then need staff volunteers. Charities in my opinion have become the worse example of paying overinflated salaries at the top at the expense of the bottom. The problem is they always believe gravy trains will never run out of steam, but the British (the most generous givers to charity in the world) will not carry on being used and abused in this way.

I volunteered at a library and was hoping to have a varied experience. Nope! Every time I spent the session tidying the shelves and returning books to the shelves, involving lots of bending and stretching. Fine for a while, but really boring for three hours at a time.

I also did the training to volunteer at the CAB, but I was really irritated by the insistence on a commitment to defined sessions each week, with the requirement to book holiday time and no flexibility in the days worked. Cheeky I call it, when it's costing money in fuel etc, to get there in the first place.

I've tried three times to volunteer at a food bank, but been told each time that there are no vacancies and that they'll be in touch when there are. Never happened.

I used to volunteer with WRVS-did over 20 years-until officialdom made us redundant. We ran meals on wheels in the village with very good fresh cooked meals provided by the primary school (or the local hotel during school hols). None of us claimed our mileage allowance so it was saved throughout the year and we bought small Xmas gifts for the recipients. We saw people regularly, put their lunch out for them, had a little chat, were even able to let district nurse know if someone didn't seem to be doing too well - a proper village community.Then the council in its infinite wisdom decided that the job could be done more cheaply. Result? 14 frozen meals per person delivered fortnightly from a van. It's just not the same, is it?

Parklife Charities providing a service have to work to a rota of some sort; I work in a charity shop as a team leader one day a week, and I am not allowed to open if there are less than two volunteers. On some days there are only the two, on others three, four or even five. If we didn't have a rota that people committed to, we couldn't operate. Organisations that have an appointment system certainly couldn't.

"Fewer than" not "less than" for the pedants amongst us