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Introduction
The world is changing under our very feet but we are scarcely aware of
the current deep transformations which are modifying the reasons, the
motivations, the expectations and the values of both volunteers and their
organisations.
This paper first aims at delimiting the concept of voluntary organisations;
secondly, it offers significant figures of the increasing role played
by such organisations while depicting some changes in the typology of
both them and their members; last, it finishes posing some questions which
represent their main challenges.
A territory without borders?
Delimiting the concept of volunteers is not an easy job and let alone
that of voluntary organisations. Each new definition (Estivill, 1996)
is either partial or obsolete due to the great variety of situations and
cultures and to the speed of current changes. Finding an only word encompassing
the whole phenomenon is quite complex: "third sector", "associations sans
but lucratif", "organisations bénévoles", "privato sociale", "societat
civil", "economia social", "Instituiçoes Particulares de Solidariedade
Social", "Organizaciones no gubernamentales" (ONGs), "organizaciones voluntarias",
etc., What is more, not all of these words are directly translatable to
other languages and then they usually take varied meanings. We have only
to think of the diverse nuances of the concept "civil society".
As for the contents of all these terms, one finds himself before an enormous
range of possibilities which on one side nearly merge with informal primary
social networks such as family, friendship, neighbourhood and small local
communities* (Casado, 1999), whilst on the other
one there are great complex transnational organisations such as the Red
Cross, International Amnesty or Greenpeace. One of the conclusions of
this disparity is that one of the conditions that voluntary organisations
must fulfil is achieving a certain degree of organisational and institutional
formalisation.
During a certain period, voluntary organisations were easily traceable
in that they belonged neither to the State nor to the market. Therefore,
they were assigned the defence of private interests with a non-profit
making approach. But nowadays many of them wish to protect the common
good and answer collective demands while they sometimes employ thousands
of often highly paid workers and deliver services and sell products to
public and private markets. But they undeniably belong to the private
sphere, they have a certain independence with regard to
public administrations and do not distribute their "profits" among
their managers or owners.
From another point of view, they have a certain degree of internal
participation in aspects such as information, consultation, decision-making
or internal control. Another common trait of them is that they attract
people who somewhat selflessly contribute their time or money to
the organisations. Nevertheless, what do donation, reciprocity and exchange
exactly mean nowadays?
Legal status is not usually a clear criterion of differentiation. Associations,
institutions, foundations, charities and even co-operatives, limited corporations
like Community Businesses, are some of the existing formulas according
to the diverse national laws but they do not exhaust all the juridical
possibilities (Boccacin, 1993).
In fact, we have been able to detect: 1) the enlargement of the voluntary
organisations' territorial basis from the local to the transnational level
and even to the international one (Harvey, 1995); 2) the overflowing of
their historical limits towards economic activities and promotion; and
3) the overcoming of the classic typology specialised in mutual help,
delivery of services and lobbying (according to Beveridge, 1948). In this
context, who would dare to put borders to delimit the future territory
of voluntary organisations?
Some
significant features
It is not easy to offer figures on voluntary organisations and their dynamics,
particularly from a global viewpoint as most surveys are nationally based.
The first transnational studies appeared at the end of the eighties (Documentation
Française, 1985; Robbins, 1990). From then onwards, a number of meritorious
works have been published at the European Union level (Milanesi, 1990;
Casado, 1991), a few other that even include some of the Eastern European
countries (Gaskin and Davis, 1999, includes Slovakia and Bulgary) and
still other deeply analysing the differences between the North and the
South of Europe (Estivill, 1995; Fondazione Italiana per il Volontariato,
1998) or laying the stress on specific aspects (Osborne, 1994). One of
the latest studies (European Commission, 1997) includes a number of recommendations
to reinforce these organisations by establishing the so called "civil
dialogue".
At the beginning of the nineties, a Johns Hopkins University team launched
a comparative transnational research on the third sector (Salamon and
Anheier, 1994). The first results concerned eight countries (USA, United
Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Hungary and Japan), which have
been very recently (Salamon and Anheier, 1998) extended to 22 countries
(USA, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, the Netherlands,
Ireland, Belgium, Spain, Austria, Finland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia,
Romania, Australia, Israel, Argentina, Peru, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico).
Though the criteria used by this research are arguable, it is worthwhile
transcribing its most significant data, of which this section has nourished.
- In the above mentioned
22 countries, close to 19 million people work on a full-time basis in
these organisations, which average 4.7 percent of the gross domestic
product. They account for nearly 5 percent of all nonagricultural employment,
over 9 percent of all service employment and 30 percent of all public
sector employment. According to an unpublished research conducted by
J. Deffourny, in the European Union countries the latest figures show
that the labour force employed by this sector is between 6 and 7 percent
of total employment, with countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium
and Ireland where around one out of ten people work in this type of
organisations (12.4, 11.5 and 10.5 percent respectively), well ahead
of USA (7.8 percent), which was thought to be the leading one in this
field.
- According to these
figures, this sector constitutes the world's eighth largest economy.
Compared with the 4.3 million workers in the textile sector, the 4.6
million in printing and the 5.5 million in chemistry, the number of
employees of the nonprofit sector (see the paragraph above) is a clear
indicator of the role that voluntary organisations are playing in the
labour market.
- In the countries
where chronological statistical data are available, the number of employees
in this sector increased by 23 percent between 1991 and 1996, while
the total employment rate only grew an average of 6 percent. This dynamics
is still stronger in this corner of Europe (Belgium, United Kingdom,
etc.). In France, for instance, one out of seven jobs newly created
between 1980 and 1990 belongs to this sector while in Germany they are
one out of eight or nine, particularly in fields such as health and
social services.
- Generally speaking,
the nonprofit sector is larger in the more developed countries. Thus,
in Western Europe it accounts for 10.1 percent of total employment (including
voluntary staff), whilst it only averages 2.1 percent in Latin America
and 1.3 percent in Eastern Europe.
- There are other
territorial and functional differences worth to be mentioned. Two-thirds
of all nonprofit employment is concentrated in organisations involved
in the fields of education (30 percent), health (20 percent) and social
services (18 percent). This pattern changes radically if volunteers
are included as 60 percent of them collaborate with organisations devoted
to both recreation, including sports, and social services. The relative
weight of volunteers still increases from 25 percent to 31 percent if
one considers other fields such as environment and advocacy.
In Western Europe the organisations providing welfare services constitute
the major force in nonprofit employment. Three-fourths of all nonprofit
employees work in education, health or social services, whilst in Eastern
Europe those devoted to leisure, sport, advocacy and development are
much more important in employment-related matters. As for Latin America,
education is the major field (43 percent), followed by the defence of
professional interests (15 percent), culture and recreation (13 percent),
social services (9 percent) and development (7 percent). In the other
developed countries such as USA, Australia, Japan and Israel health
(35 percent) and education (29 percent) organisations lead the way.
- What about the
sources of income? In the nineteen countries of which we have figures,
47 percent of the income comes from the sale of goods and services,
42 percent from public sector funding and 11 percent from philanthropy.
In Ireland, Belgium, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands and France, public
administration funding exceeds 50 percent whilst it is in the Eastern
countries where philanthropy is above 15 percent (Rumania, 36 percent,
Slovakia, 23 percent, Hungary and the Czech Republic 18 percent), as
a likely result of the historical role of their enterprises in the provision
of social and health services. Nevertheless, this pattern seems to have
been changing between 1990 and 1995 in favour of a greater weight of
the income derived from the sale of products and services.
After these figures, which reveal the dynamics of the nonprofit sector
and the relevance of its social, economic and employment role everywhere,
it is time to put forward some hypotheses in order to explain the changes
in volunteers' motivations.
"Old
and new voluntarism"
Despite the risk of a simplistic assessment typical of any dichotomy,
we will try to detect some values and attitudes which distinguished the
more traditional features of voluntarism from its current wave.
Thus, yesterday or the day-before-yesterday's volunteers were driven by
religious, class-related or humanitarian reasons. As far as the two first
motivations are concerned, in France we would find the "Secours Catholique"
and the "Secours Rouge", for the last one the Red Cross. In most cases
volunteers felt driven by a belief in a future either spiritual or earthly
salvation. Categorical duty was a must. People had to be catered for and
this help was obviously aimed at the most "disadvantaged", to the least
"conscious", to the physically and psychologically disabled. The idea
was to compensate the most negative ordinary or extraordinary material
(wars, catastrophes) and ideological effects of the political order and
to alleviate its most harmful consequences. Charity, benefaction, reparation,
generosity, moralisation, were the most common expressions used to explain,
promote and legitimise voluntary actions which were seen as exemplary
but which were often lowly skilled and scarcely concerned about the links
with similar actions and organisations. Generally speaking, these organisations
were quite closed to external influences and internally reproduced the
dominant patterns in terms of verticality, hierarchy, uncritical adhesion
and economic opacity. They very rarely thought of introducing models of
business management or evaluation. Politics and economy were distant worlds
they usually ignored or even despised. The relationships with the public
sector were only sporadic and mutually suspicious as the latter charged
itself with the defence of general interests whilst voluntary organisations
catered for particular concerns.
These traits were not obviously typical of all the organisations, volunteers
or countries. Lots of exceptions could be found, although some of those
features are still applicable today. Nevertheless, despite historical
continuity and a number of examples where patterns rooted in the past
and others looking ahead are mixed, it is already possible to distinguish
a few signs of identity of this new culture of voluntarism.
The processes most likely to have brought about this swing are the following:
1) the need for finding new alternatives to a model that advocated on
one hand for the State's hegemony and on the other for acute profit-making
privatisation (Donati, 1997); 2) the need of making up for the loss of
primary links, an aspect (the loss "du lien social") in which French litterature
is quite insistent (Sainsaulieu, 1997), isolation and individual unsafeness
through collective action and the rediscovery of richer personal relations
based on adventure and pleasure ; 3) a greater availability in terms of
time, knowledge and resources by a number of populations while at the
same time poverty, exclusion and discrimination became more serious and
pressing (European Commission, 1992); 4) the search for independent solutions
in terms of staff, organisations and activities; 5) the dichotomy between
a corporativism lobbying for people to join the biggest organisations
and an individualism laying the stress on the effectiveness of small organisations
(Chanan, 1992); 6) the enthusiasm provoked by great recreational events
(concerts, etc.), sports and campaigns (solidarity with the 0.7 percent
movement, etc.), which provided people with new signs of identity at the
same time that small specific actions encouraged reciprocity and 7) the
search for alternative ways to achieve social, economic and cultural emancipation
in contrast with the erosion of the political game and policy options,...
In this context, new motivations and values have been arising that are
breaking ancient polarisations between lay and religious, spiritual and
earthly, conservative and progressive views. In addition, they are less
ideologically christallised and more pragmatic, they achieve more specific
and momentary adhesions and are driven by the wish to attain immediate
and tangible results. Solidarity, peace, tolerance, the right to difference,
exploration and pleasure are the new signs of identity of this movement.
The relationship with excluded populations has also shifted. The focus
is no longer on salvation but on trying to jointly discover the reasons
for their exclusion and to achieve the independence of individuals, groups
and populations (Commission Européenne, 1998). At the same time that equal
access to rights is campaigned for and real discriminations denounced,
new organisations involved in the delivery of services appear that try
not to reproduce external models. Networks and their horizontality are
good examples of this. They devote efforts to training and qualification.
Professionalisation, not without contradictions, is now the order of the
day. New functions such as integration, mediation, advice, partnership,
evaluation, public relations, etc., are emerging but what is truly new
is an internal style which swings from laying the stress on efficiency
and good practice to the demand for a participatory and collective decision-making
process; between the introduction of entrepreneurial criteria and the
quality of personal relations. This latter aspect is much common in self-help
and female groups and in all those particularly concerned about introducing
more community and qualitative ways of life.
The relationship with the economic sphere has also changed as voluntary
organisations have gradually become usual producers of goods and services,
social enterprises that have taken roots in their respective territories,
which constitute economic consortia and circuits, which seek alternative
sources of income and are often helped by other volunteers, as it is happening
in Italian social co-operatives (Berney and Estivill, 1994).
The new culture of voluntarism does not deny itself a certain degree of
political dimension and sees itself as a social and political agent of
transformation. It claims for a new impartial protagonism focused on the
defence of both global and particular interests, on the criticism and
denunciation of any violation of specific or global rights, on the protection
of the environment and on the involvement in world-wide humanitarian campaigns
(famines, refugees, anti-apartheid, natural disasters from the local to
the universal levels, etc.).
These shifts in the positions and values of both volunteers and their
organisations have obviously resulted in a rapprochement with public administrations,
which are interested in the "private social sector" from the viewpoint
of either virtue, i.e. with regard to a discourse to promote the participation
of civil society, or of a necessity connected with a sharing of functions
owed to the lesser costs and higher adaptability of voluntary organisations.
Certain events, as for instance the Olympic Games themselves, and functions
such as the defence of common goods like the environment, cultural heritage,
civil protection, peace and local development overcome the old fashioned
differentiation between the public and the private sectors thus resulting
in a new strategic partnership (Estivill, 1997) where supplementariety
is feasible. Would then the public sphere be the monopoly of public administrations
or should we be moving towards other concepts?
However the case, all this implies for both volunteers and their organisations
to break with their isolation, segmentation and, in short, narcissism.
Consequently, they are in need of looking for new models of interplay:
1) with the territory, from the local to the universal levels and the
other way round; 2) between the organisations involved; and 3) between
them and the other actors. Fora, platforms, equalitarian commissions,
confederative formulas and above all networks which are trying to overcome
the ancient internal and external borders are arising everywhere.
"Les
petits riusseaux formen les grandes rivières": Risks and challenges
Voluntary organisations look alike a river which for long has been squeezed
between high mountains such as the State and the market and is now overflowing
towards the nearby valley while flooding the public and economic spheres.
In such a context, their first challenge is to find new words and concepts
to signal the key parameters of what is currently happening. It is of
the utmost importance to undertake a deep and obviously transnational
analysis of the present significance of volunteers and of the new role
of their organisations. Such analysis could perhaps be started up from
olympism in that it regularly gathers hundreds of thousands of participants,
spectators, volunteers and professionals in a particular location but
which is a worldly phenomenon which would not exist but for the confluence
of governments, public administrations, professional and voluntary associations,
social and economic agents and citizens in a framework of competition
and brotherhood. Could this symposium be the beginning of such a necessary
deep reflection? A reflection that should not make us oblivious of the
fact that the overflowing of the "grand fleuve" of voluntarism poses relevant
external and internal questions it will have to face.
As far as external elements are concerned, the first one worth mentioning
is that the entry into the economic world and a certain acceptance
of its logic may result in an increase in the degree of competition between
and within voluntary organisations, in the use of management models focusing
on effectiveness, productivity and professionality, in the abandonment
of the delivery of services on a free-of-charge basis and of the social,
cultural and ethical values that have historically constituted the core
of voluntarism. The risk of shifting towards the profit-making approach
is then quite serious (see the paper presented by Bernard Eme at the European
Voluntary Congress held in Sitges on December 1998).
The other riverside is not free of risks either, since the occupation
of a share of the public territory may lead to a misunderstanding
of the notion of subsidiariety by which voluntary organisations would
feel themselves as the only representatives of all the citizens and would
try thus to replace political institutions. On the other hand, public
administrations and political leaders should overcome the clientelisms,
"collateralisms" (an Italian expression used to depict the organisations'
dependence on the great political forces) and colonial dependencies to
which they are so fond, particularly in the Southern regions and countries.
However the case, it seems that the stress is being placed on supplementariety.
This has happened in Thatcher's United Kingdom and in Reagan's USA, where
the number and relevance of voluntary organisations has been on the increase,
although in both countries the prevailing ideology charged the market
with solving most of the problems. This has also been the case in two
other countries such as Portugal and Ireland, where the weight of both
public expenditure and voluntary organisations has grown and platforms
have been created such as the "Pacto de Cooperaçao per la Solidariedade
Social" (Ferro, 1997) and the National Economic and Social Forum (Department
of Social Welfare, 1997). Both these platforms join together central and
local public administrations, social and economic partners and voluntary
organisations to negotiate, distribute and implement a remarkable share
of collective programmes, services and measures. This is how the bases
are being laid of a supplementary and equitable partnership which includes
an institutional distribution of the functions of each partner (Putnam,
1997, has proved that the richer civic tradition is, the more effective
are both the State's and the market's performances).
Another challenge arises from the economic globalisation and the reshaping
of the worldly political framework. Acting locally and thinking globally
is a first necessary though inadequate answer for the voluntary movement,
since the sum of local actions do not provide comprehensive solutions
and because global actions are also necessary. That is the reason for
voluntary organisations being in need of not only taking territorial roots
but also extending their networks by crossing their own walls, practising
transnational work and increasing the pressure on international institutions
and bodies.
As far as taking strong territorial roots is concerned, voluntary organisations
are faced with the challenge of proving their ability to carry out their
functions while filling them with new contents, envisaging new needs,
experiencing new organisational models and validating themselves as interlocutors.
Experimentation and innovation are indeed the key pieces of the voluntary
movement which has to live in accordance with the speedy pace of cultural,
social, economic and policy changes and with the emergence of new demands
without forgetting that strategies are meaningless if they are not based
upon world-wide values. Only then will the river meanders flow into the
common sea to nourish it and to make it possible for a new cycle to begin.
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*
This paper is presented to the Symposium "Volunteers, global society and
the Olympic Movement", Lausanne, November 1999. I wish to show my gratitude
to its organisers while at the same time recognising my limitations: I
know little of the olympic world and have a scarce knowledge of voluntary
movements outside Europe.
* In English literature "Community groups" are usually
distinguished from "voluntary organisations". In Italy, the "terzo settore"
is seen as somewhat different from the "privato sociale", etc. Nevertheless,
the term "non governmental organisations" is gaining ground everywhere.
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