My tryst with working as a volunteer started when my father and I drew a map of our neighbourhood on a sheet of A4 paper with a pencil – a 10-year-old’s version of Google Maps, you may call it. Why did we do it? Our aim was to help people to find it easy to navigate a newly developed area unknown to most. That, to me, is a perfect example of what volunteering can and should be – that is, solving a problem that is often unseen and unaddressed.
My last decade across the development landscape encompassed moving from being a volunteer manager in a youth-mentoring programme to creating one of India’s first online marketplaces for volunteering with non-profit institutions, and from working with a philanthropic foundation focused on promoting volunteerism to being an ecosystem enabler with the government. These have all been efforts to make it possible for many others to contribute their time and skills to solve problems, and to become better citizens in the process.
Here are my 10 notes on volunteering in India. Besides ideas and insights, I have also included questions at the end of every note for us to reflect upon.
1. Hyperlocal: Just like quick commercial brands (for example, Blinkit, among others), a citizen’s desire to volunteer will be shaped by access to the offered opportunities, time preference, and cause and/or skills preference. Platforms and civic organisations will win if they concentrate on reducing friction and helping volunteers to give their time and skills to deal with problems they care about as easily, as frequently, and as locally as possible. Questions: What opportunities exist within 100–150 metres of your neighbourhood? What kind of organisations or start-ups can bring about solutions?
2. A volunteer’s journey: Borrowing another trend from corporates and start-ups which strive to create remarkable user experiences (UX), we ought to think deeply about generating incredible volunteering experiences (VX). This is also a science and an art that religious and faith-based organisations have executed incredibly well. The transformation of an individual by going beyond the self, by giving back sufficiently to society, and belonging to a community are key to making any social and/or civic movement happen. Questions: What are the design principles that will go into creating an amazing volunteering experience? What factors matter to you while considering a volunteering opportunity?
3. Social opportunities: Fundamentally, most formal types of volunteering occur in organisations focused on solving social problems. Just as in the case of monetary giving, the tendency for people to donate time for causes like education and healthcare is the highest. Other areas, such as care for persons with disabilities or animals consist of a smaller group of volunteers, but they are far more deeply engaged than most others. Questions: How do we encourage greater numbers of volunteers, given the numerous non-profit groups in the country that work for education and healthcare? What can be done by other types of NGOs to organise their communities better and enlist larger cadres of volunteers?
4. Civic opportunities: Possibly the biggest untapped segment in India is civic volunteering. This is due to multiple reasons, but I will name a few. There is no limit to the number of options since civic volunteers need not depend on opportunities presented by NGOs alone. They can choose civic topics they want to work for and will be far more involved since they can see and experience the impact directly. They are likely to have long-term and sustained effects if their approach is visionary and by leveraging government funding and infrastructure. Questions: What can we learn from models in other countries where we see very high instances of civic engagement, including non-partisan ones, and adapt them to our context? How can cities like Mumbai build a blueprint for civic volunteerism that others can replicate?
5. Leverage government networks: Government institutions and policies are massively untapped sources of recruiting volunteers. The National Social Service and the Road Safety Patrol are some ways in which students and other volunteers become available on the supply side. On the demand aspect, several government agencies can offer endless situations for us to gain access to police stations, post offices, parks, and other public spaces. Questions: What is the biggest roadblock for people to engage the government as a key volunteering stakeholder? What kind of opportunities can be created by partnering with the government?
6. One-time volunteering: One of the methods by which schools and other institutions can ensure large-scale volunteering is by designing an effective way to start with one or several instances of low-effort and engaging with choices that are enjoyable too. The key is to introduce a large number of students and citizens to the idea of volunteering and creating a stronger desire in them to give back, to be involved and engaged, and to think that they can make a difference. This can include practising Do It Yourself (DIY) activities in the classroom, at home, or the neighbourhood to begin with. Schools can even work with intermediaries that can deliver structured volunteering programmes. Questions: What kind of enablers would the school ecosystem need to make this happen? Could we also engage teachers, parents, and other stakeholders in this pursuit?
7. Long-term volunteering: Starting from one-time volunteering, we must think of long-term, sustained paths for people to follow. Mentoring and teaching children, improving access to essential services, and mental health support, are some of the many ways in which people can volunteer over a long period of time. A major difference due to sustained volunteering is the impact (on both sides), the Returns on Investment (ROI), and how it makes a positive difference to the civic fabric in the society. Questions: For educational institutes, the New Education Policy emphasises community service, but how do we ensure greater and meaningful implementation? While long-term efforts require funds which can be challenging, can we reimagine and create new pathways for fund-raising?
8. Technology in volunteering: Like every other industry and our lives, technology has the potential to empower and scale up volunteering initiatives. From discovering volunteering opportunities on platforms to non-profits using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to draft volunteering job descriptions (JDs), from enabling technology platforms to capture data and important information during disaster relief to utilisation of technologically-skilled volunteers to help civil society organisations. The volunteering ecosystem has and continues to benefit from the power of this work but still has a long way to go. Questions: How do we enable more non-profit institutions to adopt technologies to increase their engagement? What role does AI, if any, play in improving the civic volunteering landscape?
9. Marketing in volunteering: Volunteering activities are primarily funded from three sources: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) or institutional donors, employee engagement, and Human Resource (HR) budgets of corporates, or through retail (individual) donors. One potential way to create a new funding source – and by extension a new source of interest – is by working with companies, brands, and start-ups through their marketing teams and budgets. Initiatives that involve conventional cause marketing are either tokenistic or limited in their scope. With the increasing focus – from consumers and by extension corporates – on improving their social and environmental impact, this represents a great chance for brands to do so meaningfully. Questions: What type of brands can and/or already are engaging consumers/users in social engagement? Do non-profit organisations have the bandwidth and imagination to leverage this?
10. Entrepreneurship in volunteering: Every once in a while comes a time when an industry or a cause or an ecosystem needs disruption. Fresh energy, ideas, and enthusiasm change the way the system works and how people engage with it. Given the larger shifts – social and cultural, economic and ecological – the time is right for people to embark on new ventures. In my experience of helping build an incubator for volunteering start-ups, it was incredible to witness how people curated and created opportunities – social and civic, one-time and long-term, virtual and hyperlocal – that have completely changed the way India volunteers. It is time we invest and encourage entrepreneurs to solve for volunteering in India.
Questions: Which of these ideas or questions resonate with you the most? How much are you willing to commit towards building volunteering in India?
Mr. Dharmaraj Solanki has worked across the development spectrum – in early-stage non-profit organisations to philanthropic foundations to a Chief Minister’s office. He has enacted various roles, including managing one of the largest public–private partnership programmes for the state of Maharashtra (a 100-crore+ project with over 1,000+ team members).
He is currently the Head of Projects at Project Mumbai, one of India’s biggest civic engagement non-profit organisations, that has engaged over 1.6 crore lives.