Tapping Older Volunteers

By Jennifer C. Berkshire

As the nation gets ready for the retirement of the baby boomers -- the eldest members of the generation turn 60 next year -- much of the focus has been on providing them with health care and Social Security. But some experts on aging have also begun to think about the opportunities and challenges that the boomers will pose as they seek new ways to get involved in their communities.

To gauge the readiness of the nation's charities to handle an influx of interest from the baby boomers, the National Council on the Aging, in Washington, has just released the results of a new survey showing that few organizations are ready to take advantage of a surge in interest by older volunteers. What's more, many nonprofit groups show little interest in tapping the professional skills of older Americans.

Among the key findings of the survey of 811 executives at 20 major charities and their affiliates:

• Groups that work with young people have not attracted many elderly volunteers. Organizations that provide services to the young were most successful in attracting volunteers between the ages of 18 and 39, while charities that work with older adults were the most likely to attract volunteers 65 or older.

• Confidence in the leadership abilities of older adult volunteers is not high. Slightly less than half -- 48 percent -- said that their older volunteers possess the skills to run a new project or lead a group of volunteers. That finding, a report on the survey said, "suggests that local leaders view older adults through a lens of traditional thinking about volunteering (as service providers), and not as leaders, project coordinators, advocates, or in other roles of directing efforts or shaping strategies."

• The lack of staff members to recruit and manage volunteers was cited more than any other reason when charity leaders were asked why they had not done more to attract older volunteers.

• Attracting and retaining older volunteers is not a priority, most groups said. Most charities have not developed strategic ways to tap the resources of older adults through paid or unpaid positions. One-third of respondents said that their organizations would not be interested in doing anything new to attract and retain older volunteers, even if they had extra money and staff members specifically available for that purpose.

Thomas Endres, director of civic engagement at the National Council on the Aging, noted that while much research has been done to gauge the interests of the coming generation of retired people -- AARP research indicates that half of Americans over the age of 50 plan to volunteer after they retire -- far less is known about the ability of organizations to respond to their desires.

"Are there roles available that will respond to the retirees' interests in a way that will strengthen the internal operation of the organization or allow the organization to expand or improve upon its service-delivery capability?" he asks.

Charities that took part in the survey, financed with a grant from Atlantic Philanthropies, in New York, include the Alliance for Children and Families, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, the National Institute of Senior Centers, and the Salvation Army.

Mr. Endres said the biggest reason that charities do not want to focus on attracting older volunteers is that they lack the money for efforts to recruit volunteers of any age.

"Like all organizations with limited resources, they have to attend to day-to-day operations and figure out where their money is going to come from," says Mr. Endres. "We have to make the case to these organizational leaders that if they step back and redirect some of their resources to provide greater opportunities to older adults, they will benefit."

'Professional Approach'

Mr. Endres says that helping charities raise money to hire people who can develop paid and unpaid opportunities for older people is a top goal of his organization. "It's clear that if we're really going to bring older adults in," he says, "we're going to have to develop a more systematic, professional approach."

But the experience of Catholic Charities USA, a survey participant, shows just how difficult that process is likely to be. The organization, which has 157 affiliates run by local dioceses, mobilizes 250,000 volunteers nationwide, but the group's national headquarters never had the money to assign someone the task of helping affiliates recruit and manage volunteers. Then in 2001, the organization received a grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service to spend time identifying opportunities for older volunteers.

"It showed us that we had done really well placing older adults in our direct-assistance programs, but that we weren't necessarily making the best use of highly skilled volunteers," says Jane Stensen, director of senior programs at the organization.

While Catholic Charities has long relied upon retired lawyers for some of its human-rights advocacy work, the grant shone a light on other areas that could benefit from the skills that accountants, doctors, and others have to offer.

But when the grant money was gone, the national office was unable to find enough money to sustain even a part-time position that would continue to recruit people of any age to volunteer at Catholic Charities affiliates.

Perceptions of Older People

While tight resources are one reason charities do not focus on finding opportunities to get older Americans involved in volunteering, Marc Freedman, president of Civic Ventures, in San Francisco, says another factor is also at work.

"There's this tradition of senior-volunteer opportunities being about keeping seniors busy. The image that comes out is the kindly, frail blue-haired woman knitting a quilt for a needy baby," says Mr. Freedman, whose organization seeks to mobilize older Americans to volunteer. "The problem is that there's no spectrum of opportunities for the retirees who bring with them an incredible amount of education and talent."

Constance Todd, executive director of the National Institute of Senior Centers, says the newest volunteers who help run the 15,000 senior centers represented by her organization have been quick to demand different opportunities than the generations of volunteers that preceded them.

"They want their volunteer work to have value and an impact and they like social interaction," says Ms. Todd.

They don't want to do just any volunteer task, she notes, but want to put their particular interests and expertise to use in their work. "They want to teach computer classes or encourage their peers to get the biggest impact from working out in the fitness center," says Ms. Todd. "They want to engage in live plays and perform at a professional level."

That's different from the old days, says Ms. Todd, when the hundreds of thousands of older volunteers who serve as the mainstay of the nation's senior centers were content to come and spend a whole day at a center, answering the phone, greeting visitors, even calling out bingo numbers at games the centers ran.

And while Ms. Todd acknowledges the challenge of making over a system that has been run mostly by volunteers since 1943, she believes that the influx of baby boomers will ultimately help the senior centers realize their next big goal: moving older adult volunteers out of the centers and into the neighborhoods they serve.

"We want to send them out into the school systems, to work with teens, with prisoners, with people who have HIV," says Ms. Todd. "That's the next wave."

Charities that have worked closely with older volunteers have seen mixed results.

Stephen Rikkonen, chief development officer at Leader Dogs for the Blind, in Rochester, Mich., says a retired personnel specialist three years ago offered to provide expertise to the organization free. "It was something the organization really needed," says Mr. Rikkonen.

The charity asked the man to oversee personnel issues for its 108 full-time and part-time workers, the first time since it was founded in 1938 that it had anybody, paid or volunteer, in such a role. The organization decided the contributions the volunteer made were so significant that 18 months ago it hired a full-time personnel official, though the volunteer continues to offer occasional personnel advice to the charity's top managers.

Mr. Rikkonen says that experience has persuaded him to seek out volunteers with professional skills. "Now we're looking at people who have Web-site experience, computer skills, a development background. Whatever their area is, we'll take the help."

But some charities say that meeting the expectations of retired professionals isn't always easy. Howard Schiffer, founder and executive director of the Vitamin Angel Alliance, a charity in Santa Barbara, Calif., that distributes nutritional supplements to children and families around the world, says he often hears from people who have led successful careers and now want to use their skills to volunteer -- but not necessarily in ways that are useful to his organization.

"We get calls from people with amazing skills who want to travel. They'll say, 'I want to go to this country and run your program.' That's great, but we work with people in those countries," says Mr. Schiffer.

The challenge for a nonprofit organization that has been run on a shoestring budget -- with the exception of a part-time secretary, Vitamin Angel as been run mostly by volunteers -- is to tap into the "can do" mentality of older volunteers while educating them about the realities of a small charity. "These are highly successful people, often entrepreneurs, and they're used to getting things done," says Mr. Schiffer.

He describes a recent experience in which one of his older adult volunteers, a retired software executive, was helping to create the charity's first business plan.

"He wanted to know about our marketing plan because he was used to dealing with a marketing department. He wanted to know who is the head of the fund-raising department. It was a lively discussion and he ultimately got it, but that's the reality of dealing with a nonprofit," says Mr. Schiffer. "We're not an organization that wants to build a huge infrastructure and for some people coming from big companies, that can be hard to understand."

Seeking Help

Even as advocates for older adult volunteers bemoan the lack of substantive volunteer opportunities at charities, some nonprofit organizations say they get overlooked by prospective volunteers because of their missions. Case in point: GirlStart, a charity in Austin, Tex., that seeks to help girls develop a strong interest in math, science, and technology.

Rachel Muir, the charity's executive director and founder, says that she would like to make use of the high-level expertise that retired volunteers bring with them. "There are so many things they could help us with," says Ms. Muir. "Budget projections, planning and executing our programs, helping us expand our reach in our community. Even real-estate experience would be helpful."

But few older adults have expressed interest in volunteering to help GirlStart. The charity's 400 volunteers include college students and plenty of young mothers -- GirlStart's target audience is girls in grades one through eight -- but not many retired people.

"It's definitely harder for us to reach this population," Ms. Muir says.

GirlStart recently hired its first full-time coordinator of volunteers, and Ms. Muir says that recruiting older adults will be among the coordinator's top priorities. In the coming months, the charity plans to speak to all of the major service organizations in the Austin area.

"The challenge is that these folks are out of our immediate circle. But wow, we could sure use their help," says Ms. Muir.

Mr. Freedman, of Civic Ventures, says it is important that charities take such steps to reach out to older volunteers, and to design new opportunities for them.

Otherwise, he says, a growing number of retired people will get so fed up with existing charities that they may decide to start their own organizations -- which will make the competition for money and other resources more challenging.

"What we're starting to see now is a group of social innovators who are creating new organizations so that they can make the kind of contribution they want to make," says Mr. Freedman. He points to retired doctors and nurses who have set up free health-care clinics, to retired lawyers who are now providing pro bono legal advice, and to Experience Corps, a network for older adult volunteers run by his organization. Experience Corps runs tutoring programs that now operate in 13 cities.

Rich Yurman, a retired English professor, turned to the San Francisco chapter of Experience Corps seven years ago, frustrated with his experience as a volunteer at a small nonprofit organization that seeks to curb domestic violence.

He says that, while he wanted to work with perpetrators of domestic violence, "my job was office work: answering the phone, putting together packets."

Mr. Yurman, 68, decided he might be better off putting his teaching skills to use, so he called Experience Corps. "They said, 'Come in for an interview,' and within a week I was in the classroom." He now works with a third-grade girl at San Francisco's Sunset Elementary School, tutoring her in reading once a week for an hour and a half, in addition to teaching poetry to her entire class.

The experience, he says, has been immensely rewarding. It has also provided him with some insights into how charities can best attract and retain older volunteers.

"You use people's abilities and give them a sense that they're part of the decision-making process," says Mr. Yurman. "That's what's going to keep them around. That's what makes them want to invest in the organization."

A summary of the survey results is at http://www.respectability.org/research/survey.pdf.