International Volunteerism and Capacity Development in Nonprofit Organizations of the Global South

Capability to Carry Out Technical, Service Delivery, and Logistical Tasks

Analyses of CD tend to focus on the “how” issues—that is, on the capability to carry out technical tasks (Baser & Morgan, 2008, p. 56). This is because an organization’s capacity assessed first and foremost by its ability to deliver services and produce results (Vallejo & Wehn, 2016). The volunteering literature reflects this concern with achieving technical, functional, procedural, and structural improvements. For example, Fee et al. (2017) categorize volunteer CD efforts in two ways: helping individual staff members improve their capability to carry out tasks, and contributing to the efficiency and effectiveness of organizational processes and systems. Many volunteers begin their placement expecting to mentor, train, or advise a counterpart in their VHO. When matched with a local staff member willing to be trained, they could observe “incremental improvements that people that I’m working with feel like they are achieving” (Sophie, Cambodia; see Note 1). The direct impact of skill transfer on the organization’s capability to carry out tasks was most easily identified when technical skills were involved. In an NPO engaged in educational film production, a staff member described how working closely with the volunteer on tasks extended her capabilities: “Because I worked a lot with him I could actually see him in the process of editing all of the shots and also taking the voiceovers and all of those things. Now I can do it myself without having to have him” (Gabriela, VHO, Indonesia).

Although Gabriela’s account of learning skills from the volunteer fits the description of functional improvements, many volunteers were unsure of their CD contribution. This happened when volunteers were asked to carry out tasks rather than showing a local counterpart how to do them. Some volunteers in this situation attributed the mismatch between role expectations to a lack of understanding of CD in the VHO. As one volunteer put it, “the organization just applied for a [volunteer] because it would be helpful to have an employee. They didn’t have a counterpart set up . . . and there was no support for me to do anything” (Simone, Cambodia). Although Simone took CD to mean working with local staff to improve their capacity, her VHO was more interested in using her skills to deliver outcomes. This was commonly found in small organizations. As one staff member put it, “volunteers are very valuable to small NGOs who do not have the capacity to employ all the staff with the kinds of skills the organization needs. So volunteers not only help build capacity, they act as staff as well” (Joses, VHO, Solomon Islands).

When volunteers were willing to act as staff, they were more likely to work within a team and focused on organizational capacity. For example, one volunteer observing that her VHO did not “have a collective database of all the clients that we work with currently” set up a client records system (Rowena, Cambodia). In another example, the volunteer worked with his colleagues on logistical improvements including “designing the organogram . . . ; attending to the goals of the organization, and the needs of human resources to achieve those goals, and organising internal procedures for an information management system” (Manuel, VHO, Peru). From this VHO’s perspective, the volunteer’s work had a direct and positive impact on the organization’s ability to pursue its goals, and ultimately on service delivery.

The key point here is that VHOs and volunteers had different ideas about the volunteer’s role in supporting the organization’s capability to carry out its tasks and programs, with some volunteers clinging to older models of capacity building as teaching and advice-giving (Fowler & Ubels, 2010, p. 16). Others pursued a collaborative approach of creating knowledge and finding solutions by working together, or “doing together” (Aked, 2015, p. 32). This entails collaborative learning, dialogue, and building relationships of trust, which are widely acknowledged as key to effective CD but often neglected in an industry shaped by “unhelpful dichotomies, such as knower and ignorant” (Wilson, 2007, p. 193). Volunteering relationships are not immune to these divides between having and lacking capacity, and some volunteers in our study continued to understand their role as a provider of technical expertise, but the majority sought collaborative ways of strengthening the existing skills and processes in their VHO to improve its effectiveness.

Capability to Relate and Attract Support

Often a lack of resources, rather than technical capacity, prevents an organization from fully delivering its desired results. For many development organizations, increasing their visibility to potential donors and developing external relationships is a crucial aspect of CD, particularly in countries where international aid is a significant resource. To attract external support, organizations must respond to changing aid flows, donor priorities, and rules, as well as to growing competition for limited aid funds.

Australian volunteers’ English language skills were an important asset in helping VHOs to attract support. When organizations had limited English language skills and worked on locally defined development issues that were not well recognized by the wider development industry, volunteers were able to produce documents in English and enhance the organization’s profile through marketing materials, websites, and social media presence. One VHO staff described how the volunteer contributed to developing a pitch to potential funding partners:

She spent a lot of time to study to learn, to capture what we are doing, and finally she did the research and then helped us to develop the training . . . about selling technique for long-term relationships. And we are going to use her training module to translate into our language, a little bit simplifying in order to be applicable. (Phary, VHO, Cambodia)

Highlighting time, learning, and multiple translations, Phary exposes the effort that goes into developing the capability to attract external support for locally defined development goals. In other VHOs, the mere presence of Australian volunteers, with their international networks, was perceived to offer opportunities. As one VHO staff explained, “by them being here, we are better recognised by local and international funding bodies. Our relations grow. The organization’s funding is 60% from donations so it helps us a lot when we need funding” (Belinda, VHO, Indonesia). Amid fierce competition for aid funding, small organizations relied on volunteers to strengthen and diversify their external connections. In the Solomon Islands, one VHO staff credited the volunteer with helping “to connect with new donors, which opens up possible funding opportunities for us” (Joses, VHO, Solomon Islands). In Cambodia, a VHO presented the work of the volunteer as critical to the organization’s very survival:

[The volunteer] developed two concept notes for us to submit to funding agencies and helped us to develop the strategic plan . . . . Because we don’t have funding we cannot operate. And they can connect us, link us to the other organizations, because they might have connection to other organizations. (Nareet, VHO, Cambodia)

Here, Nareet connects the international volunteer’s experience, language skills, and provenance from a wealthy Northern country with his organization’ capacity to attract potential funding bodies. Aid dependency and aid fragmentation put pressures on NPOs to demonstrate capacity, and many organizations seek external validation through consultants to enhance their competitiveness (Suarez & Marshall, 2014).

International volunteers represent more affordable social capital that a VHO can use to its advantage. One Indonesian NPO staff explained how it benefited not only from the technical accountancy skills of the volunteer but also from his connections to the expatriate donor community: “We know our weakness. We are very bad on PR. Like it or not, some of them [volunteers] are connected with our donor, they talk to our donor. They will give validation for our work. This is one of the biggest benefits we have” (Wayang, VHO, Indonesia). Wayang’s reasoning indicates a pragmatic approach to Northern volunteers opening doors to the corridors of power. Previous research found that volunteers embraced their privileged position as a tool to attract resources that could change local conditions—the purpose of their role as they saw it (Georgeou, 2012, p. 151). Similarly, some volunteers in our study took an instrumental view on the racial dimension of privilege:

the fact that I’m moderately white, off-white, as I like to say, it’s definitely an element of legitimacy. People will take me more seriously . . . . I understand it and it’s not necessarily a good or a bad thing, it’s just the way to get things done here. (Oliver, Solomon Islands)

In this example, whiteness is deployed to lend legitimacy to the VHO and, at the same time, played down to lessen the difference with local colleagues.

In summary, a key aspect of enhancing the capability to relate and attract support was leveraging the volunteer’s position as “outsiders on the inside” (Devereux, Stocker, & Holmes, 2017, p. 261) to act as conduits, “brokers and translators” (Georgeou, 2012, p. 154) between the local community and international funding bodies. The fact that most volunteers spoke the language of Western donors and shared their culture helped them in this role, even though this was also a source of discomfort and critical reflection.

Capability to Adapt and Self-Renew

NPOs in the Global South operate in a rapidly changing development landscape that requires constant adaptation. Often with limited resources, they must be flexible to comply with new government regulations and donor requirements, adapt to changing community needs, and take advantage of emerging opportunities. Exchanging ideas with volunteers can contribute to an organization’s capability to adapt and self-renew (Baser & Morgan, 2008).

In VHOs where few staff had traveled abroad for study or work, volunteers provided an “opportunity to be exposed to other ideas and different ways of doing things” (Rita, VHO, Cambodia). Volunteers also acted as an international benchmark which the organization could use to measure its performance. As one VHO staff member put it, “they tell us our gaps and give us new ideas to fill those gaps” (Yeong, VHO, Cambodia). If their ideas were not of immediate use, they can be stored until the time was right: “at least we have an idea that is applicable in the future” (Phary, VHO, Cambodia). These comments indicate ambivalence about the appropriateness and useability of Northern volunteers’ knowledge and ideas, lending support to long-standing arguments about the ineffectiveness of much knowledge transfer across cultural and technical boundaries (Wilson, 2007). As one VHO employee pointed out, adapting new ideas must be led by the organization: “volunteer cannot give you directly if we do not pick up like our own” (Sathurn, VHO, Cambodia). Here, Sathurn alludes to endogenous CD by contrasting the passive receiving of ideas from the volunteer with the active process of learning. Whereas “learning from” volunteers is framed by dominant knowledge, “learning with” volunteers produces new knowledge over which the organization can claim ownership (Wilson, 2007, p. 193).

Most volunteers were conscious that organizations drive their own transformation, and they only played at best a supportive role. One approach taken by volunteers was to ask questions about “the system in place here” and “how do you manage that?” rather than imposing their own ideas about how the organization should run (Leighton, Solomon Islands). Planning processes became opportunities for reflection about current work practices and possible improvements. One volunteer recalled how he “facilitated the opportunity for the staff to develop their ideas and provided a process by which they could take those ideas and put them into a long-term frame” (Jonathan, Cambodia). VHOs pointed out that the volunteer’s outsider perspective stimulated reconsideration of established practices: “By talking with them we are sometimes made aware of things we take for granted—we say ‘oh, that is our culture’. But when they share with us how it can be done differently it gives us insight into what we can do here” (Joses, VHO, Solomon Islands).

The responses from VHO staff confirm findings from other studies that the exchange of ideas and knowledge with volunteers is important for host organizations (Lough & Matthew, 2013; Nelson & Child, 2016). However, turning new ideas and knowledge into capabilities for action and performance is not straightforward and may take much longer than a volunteer placement. Becoming aware of an idea can help people think differently and modify their behaviors, but the process of absorbing and mastering new ways of thinking needs time and encouragement from the organization leadership, particularly if it involves unlearning skills and behaviors that have been practiced for a long time (Baser & Morgan, 2008, p. 55). This time lag helps to explain why volunteers tended to be less aware than their VHOs how sharing ideas and knowledge supported the latter’s capability to adapt and self-renew.

Capability to Balance Diversity and Coherence

Diversity and coherence are seemingly contradictory features of an organization. Many host organizations in our study were aware of the benefits a variety of perspectives and ways of thinking can bring to their work. This diversity, however, has to be properly harnessed and managed to retain the overall coherence of the organization and avoid fragmentation and losing focus (Baser & Morgan, 2008, p. 33). For some VHOs, the most important contribution of international volunteers was

giving us opportunity to meet with people from different culture . . . . So then we can see the project from different angle, different point of view. [And] if you have a multinational team, it’s healthier, you can learn to communicate with the people from different culture. (Meera, VHO, Indonesia)

Meera’s comment draws a connection between diverse cultural and knowledge inputs and better outcomes. Her observation about the value of a multicultural team resonates with other host organizations that perceived international volunteers as a resource to improve cross-cultural communication skills.

The diversity that international volunteers bring can also pose challenges for VHOs. Research has found that fully integrating volunteers into the daily management and operation increases coherence (Impey & Overton, 2014), but it can also test the VHO’s ability to manage tensions between volunteers and staff. Tensions were sometimes the result of volunteers creating a distance with their colleagues by refusing to work to the same rules on the grounds that they were “just volunteers” even when their stipends were higher than local staff salaries. Other volunteers created disharmony by adopting a supervisory role with local colleagues or seeing their own knowledge and skills as superior. VHOs adopted various strategies to manage emerging tensions in the relationship with volunteers: “Whatever the volunteers are working on, we harmonise that in terms of work plans with their counterparts . . . We try for communal meetings and catch-ups” (Rita, VHO, Cambodia). By bringing staff and volunteers together in meetings, this VHO created opportunities to explain existing work practices and exchange different perspectives, which improved the coherence of its endeavors. Other VHOs insisted on the volunteer working as part of a team, and a few sought regular feedback from staff on “how this volunteer is doing” (Harto, VHO, Indonesia). Such measures can have long-term beneficial impacts on communication flows and productive management of diversity within the organization.

From a volunteer perspective, the capability to balance diversity and coherence was most noticeable when found lacking. Some volunteers found that their VHO lacked experience in dealing with international volunteers or were too preoccupied by an internal or external crisis to manage a volunteer. Among the issues affecting volunteers were hierarchies between the VHO leadership and rank-and-file workers and between expatriates in the organization and local workers which undermined their own and the organization’s effectiveness. According to one volunteer, “a lack of collaboration between staff members and a lack of communication” hampered her contribution to the VHO (Iris, Cambodia). Volunteers responded variously by adapting their CD activities to suit the situation, changing to a different VHO, or terminating their placement early.

Although volunteers tended to rate their own relational skills highly, being outside their cultural comfort zone could present challenges for them and their VHOs. At the top of the list of concerns were “language and cultural barriers” (Roseanne, Cambodia). One volunteer acknowledged that “fundamental misunderstandings between me and [co-worker] . . .had been going on for months [and] there was nobody in that organization that I could on a regular basis debrief about work in English” (Anne, Peru). Other volunteers mistook local cultural protocols of politeness for agreement with their ideas, which led to frustrating waste of time and resources on activities that did not meet the needs of the VHO: “I’ll have a great idea [for a] project and how I think it will help and I get a ‘yes.’ Then it turns out that was a stupid idea because of things I just didn’t understand” (Annette, Cambodia). One VHO staff member explained that hosting Australian volunteers made her organization more aware of the factors that helped to achieve coherence: “language, communication, and previous experiences, adaptability [as well as] similarities in global outlook [Spanish: cosmovision]” (Giaconda, VHO, Peru).

Thus, VHO’s capability to benefit from the diversity that an international volunteer represents depended on many factors, including open communication, shared language, and a willingness to adapt and learn. By taking time to build relationships with their colleagues, actively seeking their input and encouraging questioning, volunteers were able to contribute to this capability, particularly if they shared the vision of their host organization and were committed to its purpose.

Capability to Commit and Engage

To generate public value, an organization needs a sense of identity, collective drive, confidence, and ambition (Baser & Morgan, 2008). In the development context, this capability can be undermined by external factors such as aid dependency and political instability which reduce the organization’s autonomy and space for action. Internal factors such as conflict over the direction or resistance to change can also diminish an organization’s sense of purpose. The capability to commit and engage relies upon a coherent strategy that reflects the organization’s self-definition and core values, and new resources and diversifying relationships with outside groups.

Although this core capability is developed over a longer time span than volunteers can provide, two examples from Peru show how volunteers can support this process. One VHO was in the process of transitioning from being a subsidiary of a Northern NPO to an independent organization. In this critical phase, it recruited a volunteer to review the organization’s engagement policy with the mining sector. She soon became part of the leadership team working on several strategic projects including the first strategic plan of the organization, image creation, and marketing. Asked about her CD role, the volunteer was ambivalent about the term and described it instead as encouraging collective problem solving and challenging her colleagues’ “mindsets by playing the devil’s advocate” (Tora, Peru). From the VHO perspective, the volunteer’s work “moved the organization a step forward in terms of being able to relate to the mining industry” and resulted in “changing the organization so it can do better work” (Aron, VHO, Peru).

In the second example, the VHO was a grassroots organization in the rural highlands of Peru looking for new sources of livelihood for its members. It hosted a volunteer to help develop tourism as an alternative income stream for a local farming community suffering from the impacts of armed insurgency over an extended period. The VHO head emphasized the organization’s strong social commitment and his expectation “to develop a synergic and sustainable relationship with the volunteer based on our principles and also our institutional goals” (Arcani, VHO, Peru). Despite being strongly rooted in the community, the VHO had difficulties in persuading its members to invest their time and labor in tourism. The volunteer managed to convince his VHO to establish a social enterprise, rather than seeking to partner with large tour operators. As he explained, “when people manage to get that vision [social entrepreneurship],” both the organization and the community benefit “because everything would stay locally.” By the end of his placement, community members no longer identified themselves as “disadvantaged from the results of the war” but now “saw themselves more like small business people” (Tonio, Peru). From the VHO’s perspective, the volunteer had inspired the local people “to hope again” (Arcani, VHO, Peru). Overseeing their own tourism business enhanced the VHO’s and the local community’s sense of identity, autonomy, and confidence, which is key to the capability to engage and commit (Baser & Morgan, 2008, p. 27).

In both cases, the VHOs demonstrated a strong sense of ownership of the CD project, which indicates that there is a virtuous circle connecting existing capability to engage and commit with the effective utilization of a volunteer to enhance it. Second, these volunteers were able to communicate in the host organization’s language and understand its commitment to local ownership, identity, and ethical development. Shared values, meaning, and moral purpose are at the heart of “a convincing answer to the ‘why’ of capacity development” (Baser & Morgan, 2008, p. 56), or as Woodhill (2010) argues, CD becomes meaningless without shared objectives and sense of purpose.