Baby Boomer Barriers To Volunteering

1 comment | August 3rd, 2007 | Trackback

As people advance in their careers, and find more free time as their children grow up, they often look for a way to share their skills with their community.

But sometimes it’s not so easy. VolunteerMatch recently investigated some of the obstacles facing one particular generation of potential volunteers in the US: baby boomers.

Greg Baldwin, VolunteerMatch President said one of the primary challenges for this group of potential volunteers is that “many can’t find an outfit that engages the full range of their interests, skills and life experience.” Other obstacles mentioned in a phone survey were lack of time and health concerns.

In fact, these sound like fairly typical reasons why people don’t volunteer, so why does it matter?

The outlook for potential baby boomer volunteers is significant because soon they will be retirees…a group which has for some time made up a huge portion of those contributing volunteer labor for non-profits in the US. There are a lot of baby boomers, and if they don’t volunteer, non-profits will soon start to feel it.

Volunteer Match suggested that non-profits address this by making an effort to provide volunteer opportunities “that pay off in high volunteer satisfaction.”

Another recommendation for non-profits was to focus on creating positions with a clear beginning, middle and end. This will appeal to volunteers who may be hesitant to take on a commitment to an unknown organization with no end in sight.

There was also a good list of sites that non-profits might use to seek out volunteers. Not surprisingly (given that the study was done by VolunteerMatch), many organizations they spoke to were familiar with VolunteerMatch. Others used included Idealist.org, Craigslist, 1-800-Volunteer.org, VolunteerSolutions.org, the Hands On Network and ServeNet.org. Baby boomer or not, stop by a few of these sites if you’re on the lookout for volunteer opportunities at home.