Everywhere I go, I hear that volunteerism is fading. It doesn’t matter if it‘s the fire service or the local Kiwanis club, every organization seems to have trouble recruiting and retaining volunteers. To solve this problem, volunteer fire departments are implementing pay-per-call, Length of Service Award Program (LOSAP) or other incentives to encourage volunteerism. The problem is that once these plans are in place and the money is spent, the number of volunteers rarely grows and often eventually declines.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate my once-a-year check from the department, but it’s not what keeps me or most of the 750,000 volunteers nationwide responding to that 0300 HRS fire alarm for the second time this week. Having worked with the more than 20,000 members of VolunteerFD.org and their volunteer departments across the country, I can confidently say that it is the same everywhere. While every department seems to be looking at monetary solutions to the volunteerism problem, I have heard of only a scattered handful of departments that had any success by paying their members.
If you don’t believe me, try this exercise with your department. At your next monthly meeting, take a few minutes to go around the room and ask two questions of each member: Why did you join, and why do you keep coming? I have done this exercise around the country and out of a group of 25 people, I may get one person who mentions their department’s LOSAP or pay-per-call program. The responses are usually about the brotherhood, giving back to the community, and because they enjoy the challenge.
After years of doing this exercise with departments across the country, I started to wonder exactly why people volunteer, and what we could do to enhance the desire to do so. I may have found an answer in my research on professional development in EMS, in the form of an article titled, “The ‘What’ and ‘Why’ of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior.” The article is one of many I read about motivating individuals in adult learning, but it also applies to the recruitment and retention of volunteers as they follow the same path as Deci and Ryan’s self determination theory (SDT), which seeks to develop an understanding of exactly what motivates individuals. SDT states that this understanding “requires a consideration of an individual’s innate psychological needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness” (2000, p. 27).
Deci and Ryan write that “people will tend to pursue goals, domains, and relationships that allow or support their need satisfaction. To the extent that they are successful in finding such opportunities, they will experience positive psychological outcomes” (2000, p. 230). The writers identify three innate needs that all individuals pursue:
- Autonomy: the organismic desire to self-organize experience and to have activity be concordant with one’s integrated sense of self.
- Competence: spurs on cognitive, motor and social growth.
- Relatedness: the desire to feel connected to others — to love and care, and to be loved and cared for.
When you complete your discussion with your membership, their reasons for volunteering will easily fall into these three categories.
The fire service has always been a brotherhood, but lately I’m hearing that the brotherhood isn’t the same, or is falling apart. When we consider Deci and Ryan’s innate need for relatedness, it becomes apparent that the erosion of the brotherhood and volunteerism goes hand in hand. Deci and Ryan write: “SDT proposes that people will tend naturally to internalize the values and regulations of their social groups. This tendency is facilitated by feelings of relatedness to socializing others, as well as feelings of competence with respect to the regulation being internalized … Intrinsic motivation concerns active engagement with tasks that people find interesting and that, in turn, promote growth. Such activities are characterized by novelty” (2000, p. 23). If that doesn’t sound like the ideal fire service, I don’t know what does.
What an odd idea that people are motivated intrinsically rather than by extrinsic methods such as money. Luckily the fire service provides a novel environment that promotes growth and a sense of relatedness. This means that by its nature, the fire service already addresses an individual’s innate needs, we just be cognizant of these needs and help our members grow by satisfying their needs. Deci and Ryan explain that “satisfaction of these three needs is, indeed, associated with psychological well-being” (2000, p. 233).
So if we accept what Deci and Ryan have concluded about intrinsic motivation and its relation to volunteering, what do they have to say about extrinsic motivation? “Motivational strategies such as rewards and threats undermine autonomy and thus lead to non-optimal outcomes such as decreased intrinsic motivation, less creativity, and poorer problem solving.” This sounds like the core of the problem with LOSAP and pay-per-call programs. Their research also found that “a recent meta-analysis of 128 studies spanning 3 decades confirmed that not only monetary rewards, but also all contingent tangible rewards significantly undermined intrinsic motivation” (2000, p. 234).
The problem is that it‘s easier to throw money at the problem rather than trying to fix the underlying causes of member attrition. It seems to me that if we create an environment in the fire service that encourages members to grow both socially and on the fire ground, they will continue to volunteer. When a department is riddled with infighting and personality conflicts, it is nearly impossible to have an environment of relatedness and brotherhood. A department that has an environment that is supportive of autonomy, competence and relatedness will not only have an abundance of members, but each of its members can consider themselves to truly be volunteer professionals.
Reference:
Deci, E. and Ryan, R. (2000). The ‘What’ and ‘Why’ of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior. Psychological Inquiry 11(4), 227-268.