Goodwill isn't a business model

We kept looking for more volunteers when the problem was something else.

I've noticed that there is a moment that seems to happen in almost every volunteer organisation. Someone says, "We just need a few more volunteers." Everyone agrees.

It sounds reasonable enough. More people means more capacity, more hands, more energy and more ideas. The problem is it usually doesn't work. After enough years sitting around board tables, committee meetings and endless discussions about "what the organisation needs", I've become increasingly convinced that one of the biggest myths in the community sector is the idea that goodwill can solve capability problems.

It can't.

That isn't a criticism of volunteers, because I am one! Much of the work I care most deeply about has been voluntary. Some of the smartest, most committed people I know give enormous amounts of their time for free. But good intentions and organisational capability are not the same thing. Most volunteer organisations begin with a problem that people care deeply about. A group of parents or a patient community or a professional association. Generally, people who have experienced something difficult and want to make things better for the next person.

At the beginning, passion carries almost everything. People answer emails after work, they build websites on weekends, they organise events from kitchen tables, they run meetings at night after the kids are asleep. Sometimes those organisations achieve remarkable things. The problem comes later when the issue gets bigger and expectations increase. Suddenly the organisation isn't just running support groups or events anymore. It is writing grant applications, responding to government consultations, producing annual reports and trying to prove its impact to people outside the community.

The work changes over time but the operating model often doesn't adapt to catch up. Boards continue to rely on people squeezing another few hours into already busy lives. The answer to every problem becomes finding another volunteer, recruiting another committee member, asking someone to "just help out." Eventually, you get the same people doing everything. The treasurer is the IT person. The secretary is also running communications. The chairperson is writing policy submissions at midnight.

Nobody says they're burning out because everyone feels guilty for even thinking it. After all, it's a 'good cause'. People are supposed to care. And this is where volunteer organisations can become trapped by their own values.

Volunteering is often treated almost as a moral good. The more unpaid work people do, the more committed they are assumed to be. If anyone suggests paying for expertise, people worry the organisation is becoming "too corporate." Suggest employing someone and suddenly there are concerns about losing the grassroots spirit. I've seen organisations spend years debating relatively small amounts of money while asking volunteers to contribute thousands of dollars' worth of labour every year without ever describing it that way. We would rather exhaust people than invest in them. We would rather celebrate sacrifice than ask whether the system itself is sustainable.

The uncomfortable truth is that some work genuinely requires capability, continuity and time. The big ones: Governance requires expertise. Advocacy requires capacity. Fundraising requires skill. Policy work requires experience. Complex organisations eventually need systems, infrastructure and people who have enough space to do the work properly. Recruiting more volunteers does not automatically solve those problems; in fact, sometimes they simply spread the exhaustion more widely.

There is another issue we absolutely don't talk about enough. Volunteer organisations often end up being sustained by the people who can afford to volunteer. Usually it's those with secure incomes, flexible jobs, supportive families or fewer caring responsibilities where they can contribute more easily than those who don't have those luxuries. Over time this can shape who gets heard, who participates and who influences decisions. When we're talking about lived experience organisations, the spectrum can get very broad on whose experience we are discussing and solving for, because the people most affected by an issue are not always the people with the greatest capacity to volunteer.

None of this means volunteerism has failed, far from it. I believe that volunteers remain the heart of many organisations. They bring lived experience, passion, commitment and legitimacy that money cannot buy. But goodwill was never supposed to do everything.

So, perhaps the question is not whether organisations should remain volunteer-led. Perhaps the better question is what volunteers should reasonably be expected to carry, because if an issue matters enough to build an organisation around, it probably matters enough to invest in properly. 

Passion can start an organisation. It rarely sustains one.

And asking people to keep giving more and more of themselves is not always generosity. Sometimes it's simply the only business model we've allowed ourselves to imagine.