volunteers

What do you do when the lights go out the night before the election? Break out the glowsticks.

At least that’s what the Oregon Bus Project did last night when Portland’s east side was plunged into darkness after a terribly timed substation failure. Using nothing but glowsticks and finger flashlights left over from Trick or Vote, dozens of volunteer phonebankers pulled out their cell phones and kept right on making get out the vote calls.

Over 3,000 reminder calls came from the (now legendary?) “Glowstick Phonebank,” begging the question: who needs electricity when you’ve got kick-ass volunteers?

The glowstick phonebank came right on the heels of the Magical Mystery Tour, the last Bus Trip of the year, during which Bussers knocked on their 60,000th door for progressive candidates across Oregon this year.

Speaking of down-to-the-wire, there’s a few hours left before the election, and there are more calls to make, more doors to knock, and more folks left to drive to the polls.

Get out there, get out the vote, and Get On The Bus!

Are you getting involved as a volunteer offline? According to a new study by the Corporation for National and Community Service, if you are a member of the Millennial generation it is a lot more likely you just answered, "Yes!" Working with the community service organization Democrats Work I already knew this, but now we have more data to back it up.

The study looked at regional differences in volunteerism: Minneapolis-St. Paul came out on top, Miami came in last among the largest cities; Utah was tops among the states. But it also opened a window into how age differences change volunteer choices and how those choices have changed between the generations.

After a large drop off in volunteering among the members of Generation X, the Millennials are embracing public service in numbers not seen since the Boomers.

Baby Boomers will double the number of older American volunteers in the coming decades and young people are volunteering at higher rates than the last generation. "We have an unprecedented opportunity to seize this moment and usher in a new era of service in America," said David Eisner, CEO of the Corporation.  "By giving us a look under the hood of U.S. volunteering, this research shows what we need to do to recruit and retain tomorrow’s volunteers."

"Recruit and retain"

Democrats rebuilding New Orleans after Katrina

Retention is increasingly a problem. More people are volunteering for the first time, but organizations are not doing a good job of keeping them in place. Unlike in the past when church-based organizations gave a more permanent base for volunteering, the new volunteerism is finding expression in more temporary opportunities, including "done in a day" projects. Among youth volunteers in particular, there is a growing segment that engages in "voluntourism" by heading many miles from their homes to perform service. They are more able than their rooted elders to respond to disasters like Hurricane Katrina, and while this underscores a deep civic engagement, it may also contribute to a more epsiodic, less consistent, participation.

In trying to explain Florida's low volunteer rate to the Associated Press, some Miami residents offered this:

Ani Olmeda Gonzalez at Mercy Hospital said the tough economy was forcing some would-be volunteers to choose paid work instead. Charlotte Donn at YMCA of Greater Miami noted the city is home to many transients. And Cathy Agosti of VITAS Innovative Hospice Care noted what many others repeated.

"Busy lives," she said. "Busy lives."

Florida is by no means unique in those ways, so are those explanations even true anywhere? Not geographically, at least. The choice between a busy life of paid work and giving time to the community is not a trade-off most people are making. The study showed that on average people who volunteered in the last year also spent as much time at their jobs as the people that didn't. Where did they find the time? The answer appears to be "television."

People who had volunteered in the last year watched an average of 15 hours of television a week. People who had never volunteered watched an average of 23 hours a week. Stretch that over a year and you have more than 436 extra hours to work with. Volunteers seem to need the artificial interaction of television far less. They also reported spending much more time engaging in social activities and ate fewer meals alone. Some of these numbers are being moved by the Gen-X families. When kids are in the picture, the parents volunteering hours move sharply upwards as they give their time to school and childcare related causes. At every age, however, having a job, a family, or busy social life actually meant more hours being donated. Working moms and college towns led the pack every time.

Although on average, there was not a trade-off between a paycheck and service, age did seem to be a factor. Young people were more likely than older people to cut back on work hours in order to give.

Democratic  political volunteers, rallying to feed the homeless

As Generation X ages, it seems unlikely that they will suddenly start contributing at the levels that the Baby Boomers have. There may well be a time in the next few decades when the Millennials either carry the full load or will have to create institutions that pass on the value of volunteeerism to future generations. Either way, there is a burden, but also a great opportunity. If the Millennials continue to embrace volunteerism that includes political activism, they can generate a huge shift in the policies that concern them . . . and there is reason to believe that this shift will be progressive and partisan. Indeed, the nature of "voluntourism" is to give of one's time to remediate failures of national policy. Eco-volunteers and community volunteers are engaged with failed policies at their most visible and local level. And while there is a strong feeling among Millennials that government can be an effective tool for good, there is also a sense that we don't have to wait around for problems to be solved.

As we continue to see, the failure of the Bush Administration to issue a call to service, rather than a call to shopping, was rejected by a generation of people who are not waiting for the invitation to get involved.

This has been a difficult past week for me as my department at work got cut and I am now sadly unemployed. So – before I start my blog I want to give a huge shout out to the folks who have really stepped up to help me find work. The people that have offered their contacts or passed around my resume have been overwhelmingly thoughtful for which I am exponentially grateful.

So, let me kick off my first day of unemployment by addressing an important and too often ignored political topic: Volunteers.

That's right... I'm bringing in some funny....

In both the democratic and republican parties today you see a split between old school traditional establishment party members and new school members that tend to be the activist-y folks who get the work done. In our movement you know these folks as the big check writers vs. the grass/netroots people. On the other side it’s the Evangelicals vs. the Goldwater Geezers.

In the past it’s been the check writers who have run both of our parties. Sure we’ve had spurts of activism here and rallies there and shaking hands, parades, kissing babies… etc. But, for the most part money went toward thousands of points in national media and direct mail all over the place. Media reigned supreme as the ONLY way to get a message out, move votes, and win elections.

Matt Singer is the CEO of Forward Montana, a home-grown non-profit that trains, mobilizes, and elects new progressive leaders in Montana.

When Forward Montana started back in 2004, we were an all-volunteer operation. At the beginning, we also thought it likely that we would stay that way. The core group had skills -- raising big checks was not one of them.

So we worked in coalition to move from youth voter turnout by phones to using doors instead. And then we launched a giant confirmation battle targeting the student member of the board of regents and won -- something that hadn't been done in 20 years, much less by a volunteer operation.

There's an energy to volunteer operations, including campus groups, where people who aren't making any money feel empowered to make the decisions regarding what the organization does. Strangely enough, getting staff can almost kill that initiative. When you're all going broke for the love of it, there's solidarity. When people start getting paid, it's easy to establish unnecessary hierarchies and for others to assume that the people getting paid can get the work done.