MBAX 6850 Week 7 Volunteer Workforce Analysis Example

Four Hundred Tutors the Organization Cannot Pay: A Volunteer Analysis of Lakeshore's Tutoring Corps, Its Real Costs and the Limits of Directing an Unpaid Workforce

Student Name

Walden University

MBAX 6850: Introduction to the Nonprofit Sector

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Four Hundred Tutors the Organization Cannot Pay: A Volunteer Analysis of Lakeshore's Tutoring Corps, Its Real Costs and the Limits of Directing an Unpaid Workforce

The Workforce in Counts

At Lakeshore, the invented literacy charity this course has followed since the first week, the main service is delivered by people the organization does not pay. Its one-to-one tutoring program depends on about 400 volunteer tutors, each meeting an adult learner for about two hours a week, supported by four paid volunteer coordinators. That is one paid coordinator for every hundred unpaid tutors. Salamon (1987) listed amateurism, reliance on caring volunteers rather than trained professionals, among the weaknesses of voluntary action that lead government to fund nonprofits, and Lakeshore's model shows both the strength and the limit he had in mind. Tutors contribute roughly 40,000 hours a year across a 40-week program year. About 140 tutors leave each year, a turnover rate of about 35 percent, and about 160 are recruited and trained to replace them and grow slightly. All figures are illustrative.

What Volunteers Cost

Volunteers are often described as free labor. They are not. Lakeshore's tutoring corps carries costs that appear in its budget even though tutors receive no pay.

Spread across 40,000 tutoring hours, support costs come to just under $10 an hour, far less than paying instructors, which is why the model persists. But the figure also shows that a tutor who quits after three months, before contributing many hours, is expensive: training and screening are spent up front. Turnover is therefore a cost driver, not only an inconvenience.

Table 1

Annual Cost of Supporting the Volunteer Corps, Illustrative

Composite organization; figures illustrative.

Authority Without Pay

The deeper constraint is that Lakeshore cannot direct its main workforce the way it directs staff. It cannot pay tutors more for difficult assignments, promote them, require them to take a Tuesday evening slot or easily remove one whose teaching is weak. Three problems follow from that single cause. Scheduling is driven by tutors' availability rather than learners' needs, so learners who can meet only on weekday mornings wait longest for a match. Turnover is high, because tutors' circumstances change and nothing ties them to the organization except their commitment. Quality is uneven, because Lakeshore can require initial training but has limited means to ensure that tutors use what they learned.

Studies of how charities coordinate volunteers suggest that organizations shape volunteer behavior mainly through the quality of support and the fit between tasks and motivations, rather than through formal control (Studer & von Schnurbein, 2013). That points to the levers Lakeshore does have.

What Departing Tutors Say

Lakeshore asks every departing tutor to complete a short exit survey, and last year 96 of the 140 who left responded. The most common reason, given by about 40 percent, was a change in personal circumstances such as a new job, a move or caring for a family member, which no organization can prevent. The second, given by about a quarter, was feeling unprepared, especially when a learner turned out to have a learning disability or limited English that initial training had not covered. About 15 percent cited a poor match with their learner's schedule or goals. The remaining reasons included the distance to tutoring sites and a sense that their work went unnoticed. The second and third groups, together roughly two in five departures, point to problems the organization can address: training that reaches beyond the basics and matching that takes goals as seriously as schedules.

Levers the Organization Does Have

Lakeshore can match tutors to learners whose goals interest them, which research suggests raises satisfaction and retention. It can offer tutors development, such as advanced workshops on teaching English learners, which many value for its own sake. It can create a small corps of experienced lead tutors who mentor new ones, giving long-serving volunteers recognition and responsibility without pay. And it can be selective at the start, asking for a six-month commitment and explaining candidly what tutoring involves, since realistic expectations reduce early departures. Brudney (2016) describes these practices, careful matching, training, recognition and clear roles, as the core of effective volunteer management.

A Recommendation

The analysis recommends two changes. First, invest in retention rather than recruitment: if turnover fell from 35 to 25 percent, Lakeshore would need about 40 fewer new tutors a year, saving roughly $12,000 in training and screening and, more importantly, keeping learners with the same tutor longer. Second, create a lead tutor role for about 20 experienced volunteers, supported by one coordinator, to mentor new tutors in their first three months, when most departures occur. Both changes work with volunteers' motivations rather than against the absence of pay.

References

Brudney, J. L. (2016). Designing and managing volunteer programs. In D. O. Renz (Ed.), The Jossey-Bass handbook of nonprofit leadership and management (4th ed., pp. 688-733). Jossey-Bass.

Salamon, L. M. (1987). Of market failure, voluntary failure, and third-party government: Toward a theory of government-nonprofit relations in the modern welfare state. Journal of Voluntary Action Research, 16(1-2), 29-49. https://doi.org/10.1177/089976408701600104

Studer, S., & von Schnurbein, G. (2013). Organizational factors affecting volunteers: A literature review on volunteer coordination. Voluntas, 24(2), 403-440. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-012-9268-y