Volunteer Involvement in the Delivery of Public Services: Advantages and Disadvantages

Two schools of thought pervade the literature on the involvement of volunteers in the delivery of government services. On the one hand, volunteers are often promoted as an answer to contemporary problems facing U.S. governments, such as eroding fiscal capacity, rising popular demands and expectations, and flagging citizen participation. Volunteers are reputed to enhance government productivity by reducing labor costs while simultaneously expanding the scope and even the quality of public services. They may also strengthen relations between public institutions and the community. But nagging doubts persist concerning the viability of the approach. Fiscally strapped governments may lack the funding necessary to underwrite and sustain volunteer programs. Even when these programs are in place, they raise serious challenges for public management, for example, with respect to recruiting and retaining volunteers, motivating a regular commitment to the agency and to the job, and gaining the support and cooperation of government employees, unions, and managers who may feel threatened by volunteers. Despite the mounting interest of elected officials, public administrators, and academic researchers in these issues, very few studies have systematically evaluated the advantages and disadvantages of volunteer involvement in service delivery in large, representative samples of public organizations or jurisdictions. This article attempts to address this lacuna by analyzing and interpreting findings of a survey on volunteer involvement administered to all Georgia cities and counties in late 1990 and early 1991. Although limited by funding and access to only one state, the survey captures important variation in population, form of government, and other key variables. More important, it documents the advantages and disadvantages reported by a large