Research data demonstrates benefits of volunteerism to older adults, such as longevity, improved physical and emotional well-being, and relationship building. With more time under their control, many retired people turn to volunteer work to continue using skills they developed throughout their careers or to contribute toward causes they care deeply about. While the benefits are well known, there are also multiple barriers to volunteerism.
It’s understandable that young people who have recently entered careers or who have young families simply don’t have time. Tending to a job, a household, and young children can be stressful; children demand a great deal of attention. For recent graduates, getting established in a career often requires a devotion to developing new skills and demonstrating commitment to an employer’s priorities, leaving time for little else. Older adults in mid-career face similar stresses. It’s also true that some people need to work more than one job to make ends meet. Lack of time is probably the most common reason people choose not to volunteer.
There are many other reasons that seniors find volunteering difficult or impossible. Some of these include:
- Physical limitations may make it impossible to travel to where needs are.
- Lack of transportation. Some have no vehicle; many seniors no longer drive.
- Distance may make it impractical to travel where needs are.
- Volunteer organizations sometimes don’t adequately appreciate volunteers’ contributions.
- Organizations that are disorganized may provide little training or supervision.
- Opportunities that utilize a person’s skills or passions may be limited.
- Excessive volunteer demands may infringe on family or leisure time.
- Complicated family situations sometimes require significant time and energy.
- Volunteers can be tempted to say yes to more volunteer jobs than they have time for.
It’s clear the challenges of volunteerism are varied and often complicated. Last week, a friend sent me a link to a short article that describes the difficulty of sustaining volunteers in the medical community, which has come to rely deeply on volunteers. The author, Gerald Kuo, is a doctoral student specializing in health care management in Taiwan. He claims that hospitals and nonprofits should attend to the needs of volunteers if they want to continue benefiting from their services.
Kuo contends that volunteers provide vital functions that the organizations don’t have the resources for. “Hospitals use volunteers to bridge the emotional gap left by understaffed clinical teams.” He goes on to list the multiple ways that nonprofits, faith communities, and aging societies depend on volunteers. He says volunteer services are not charity but are instead necessary to keep society going. Volunteers provide “emotional labor, relational presence, and continuity.” He believes not enough attention is paid to sustaining the volunteer workforce many services depend on.
While Kuo’s urgent call is primarily to healthcare professionals, the issue of sustainability extends beyond delivery of medical care. Organizations need to be diligent in preserving volunteers, because of their valuable relational contributions. Volunteers don’t need a paycheck; they simply want to know those they volunteer for or with appreciate that emotional labor is true labor.
I have interviewed multiple older adults about their volunteer habits for my current book project and want to consider both the benefits and the barriers to volunteering for a more complete picture of how older adults engage in service to others.
What barriers have you observed? Can you help me by proposing other barriers older adults may face when considering volunteering their time? I welcome your suggestions!
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Janice Airhart 