A friend in my old stomping grounds is part of a folk duet, and she and her vocal partner just had a great time donating their talents to a fundraiser. Rather like the belly-dancing ensemble here in La Crosse that has been a prodigious supporter of the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life over the years.
Volunteerism (in both the charitable as well as activist sense) is certainly nothing new. Off the top of my overeducated-and-inexcusably-eurocentric head, I can think of the charitable societies to which respectable women of (at least) the 18th century onward were more or less expected to belong, as well as the tight-knit klatsch that brought about end of slavery in the UK with nary so much as a shot fired. Doubtless, there are other examples, with varying degrees of selflessness and/or social coercion involved.
Anyone who's been personally involved with a cause--in terms of time and appreciable attention-span, rather than a monetary/in-kind donation or Facebook click--understands that that volunteers must be paid, somehow, in a coin that will satisfy them. No news flash there. However, this does hit home in the for-profit universe, particularly where a much more collaborative infrastructure --a.k.a. the internet--has deeper roots.
One early example is in software development. If computer programmers don't have to work within sneaker-netting distance of each other, that opens up all sorts of possibilities. When you throw in centralized locations for refreshing/holding/merging the code-base, those possibilities are exponential, particularly when the programmers in question have the intrinsic motivation to stick it to show off to other programmers and/or stick it to the suits who make their 8-to-8 lives so very frustrating.
One slightly more recent example is crowd-sourcing of content, whether it be news or T-shirt copy. I view the pre-emptive obituaries of the mainstream news with a certain amount of skepticism, but nevertheless, "citizen-journalism" has carved out a rather defensible niche for itself.
I suspect that any number of other industries that largely make their gelt on the creation and control of data/information/content are similarly in a state that ranges from "flux" to "turmoil." All of which indicates re-gearing, not only of the nitty-gritties like processing, but also of management. Think for a minute about why you do what you do to earn a living. Now contrast that with what you do when you're not in the office, either literally or virtually. Unless you're employed by what you're passionate about (and good on you if you are), I'm strongly guessing that these are two different things. In other words, managing the part of someone who's paying the bills is quite different from managing someone who's satisfying her/his other needs.
The folks who are looking to benefit from that second part of a person can't push the buttons on the first part of that person. As much as I dislike Apple in many respects, I will say that they seem to do a more-than-passable job pandering to both worlds. I.e., those who think they can make enough money from an iPhone application before Apple decides to muscle in, and those who give away their work purely for bragging rights. Booyah to Apple for understanding the motivational mix. Adobe, on the other hand, doesn't even rise to the standard of throwing crumbs to the peasants when it comes to involving the open source community in their Flex development platform. Personally, I stopped taking them seriously some time ago, but for the purposes of this post, bopped out to their Flex-for-Linux site just now, and discovered that they hadn't updated their release code in just over a year. Pathetic.
I might be doing a disservice to the folks who are all about "Leadership" or "Change management," but if the ivy-league MBA schools aren't requiring at least four credits at the 300-level that cover managing "volunteer" staff, they're doing a huge disservice to their customers--a.k.a. students. Because even hourly and salaried employees can appreciation "remuneration" like the the very public shout-out for a job well done, or the hand-written thank-you note or even the simple understanding of what's important to them. Things that a volunteer coordinator would instinctively understand.
I don't care what type of organization it is--everything from non-profit to for-profit--there is no such thing as pure capitalism. And the smart manager is has way, waaaaaay more motivational tools in her/his belt than just the annual review. And it's well past time that conventional wisdom caught up with the reality of this underground economy.
