Peggy Hoffman is president of Mariner Management & Marketing LLC, an association management company.  She twitters at @peggyhoffman and blogs at  the Idea Center. She will be a contributing blogger for SmartBlog Insights.

What do we really know about our association volunteers?

Not much. That is the clearest finding of The Decision to Volunteer study (DTV) conducting by ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership. DTV findings are based on responses from 26,305 association member from 23 participating associations. One of the strongest summaries of the book comes from Ben Martin.

When I first reviewed the study findings, I was struck by a number of “aha’s” (read more here). Now that I’ve hand additional time to ponder and share the results I’ve come to this aha: associations refer to volunteers as the lifeblood of their organizations and yet know so little about them.

What don’t we know? For starters, we don’t even know who is volunteering! The study found that 36.4% of the respondents reported volunteer activity yet only 6.8% were identified by their respective association.

We’re also in the dark about what keeps volunteers away. The strongest reasons are not our oft-repeated family, work and geography constraints but our own organizations. Our systems, policies, communications and procedure make us the leading obstacle to members volunteering. In the fact the #1 reason cited is lack of information about volunteer opportunities.

Our ignorance probably comes down to a few reasons:

1 – We take volunteers for granted. (Not unlike our spouse, our internet connection or our car each of which we expect to be there and give little thought until something happens.).

2 – Volunteers are “free labor.” We tend to spend time and money on those things we pay for like training for staff, maintenance for equipment, upgrades for technology.

3 – We’re focused on member benefits and services. Volunteering is seen as an optional activity not a benefit. One of the interesting findings of the study is that the volunteer experience can become a membership benefit of its own.

So while the study offers compelling data on association volunteering and proposes actions that can boost volunteering, perhaps the greatest message is that we need to learn more about our members as volunteers. Fortunately, the book does offer suggestions on discovering more (see the questions at the end of each chapter and in particular those on pg. 110) and the ASAE offers the opportunity to benchmark your association.

Related Posts:

• Association Membership Remixed
• 3 views of volunteering
• Big Idea for the Big Ideas Month
• Associations in a “Post Media World”
• Adhocracy in Action