Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly

Interest in the informal patterns of problem coping has emerged increasingly as societies turn from centralized, formal service delivery strategies toward voluntary sector local community helping resources. The results from the 1983 and 1984 sur veys reflect evidence that individuals shifted somewhat their reliance on public agencies in the direction of using voluntary association peers. Our research reports on a first step in assessing the balance between informal and formal resources for coping with a range of common experienced life-course concerns.

One might expect that increased governmental social-service expenditures would reduce charitable donations, but the direction and magnitude of this effect is theoretically indeterminate. Empirical estimates of this "crowdout" phenomenon are produced from British time-series data. Results suggest that a dollar of gov ernmental social-service expenditures "crowds out" only about one-half cent of charitable donations. This implies that governmental cutbacks will not be largely replaced by charitable donations, a result consistent with most previously pub lished studies.

The extent to which participation in voluntary organizations reflects autonomous decisions by individuals, rather than a less than fully voluntary response to social pressure, has been a matter of debate in the voluntary action literature. Middle- level managers of manufacturing companies are particularly likely to experience pressures regarding the extent and nature of their participation in local organiza tions. For this reason, a nationwide sample of production managers is used to explore the relative usefulness of personal interest in community affairs, of socio- demographic and structural characteristics known to be related to participation, and of company policy for predicting participation in local voluntary organizations. Participation is shown to reflect a number of factors, including company policy. However, the importance of community interest suggests that membership and participation in many organizations continue to be perceived as voluntary.

A study was made in a small Missouri community which attempted to determine the value of the contributions which community members made to Extension Community Development activities. A total of 11 activities was identified by a group of community leaders as the most important things which the community had done during the past nine years. This group of leaders identified people they knew who had been actively involved in each activity. Each person was asked to specify how many hours of professional, skilled labor or "other" time he/she had contributed to the activity. This produced a total of 29,563 volunteer hours. An additional 21,292 hours were volunteered by other people and organizations within the community. It is estimated that the total value of resources generated by this small community was over one million dollars!

A review of literature published in the Journal of Voluntary Action Research finds that women have been largely invisible, both as researchers and as subjects of research. Methodological practices creating sexist bias are discussed and strategies aimed at developing grounding theories specifying gender roles and contributions are proposed.

Volunteers from three soctal service agencies were surveyed to test the hypothesis that some people volunteer in order to satisfy needs that are not satisfied through their other activities. The findings indicated that those volunteers whose regular employment failed to satisfy their needs for psychological growth tended to be in volved and satisfied with volunteering to the extent that they (a) felt personally in control of their lives, and (b) wanted and expected that volunteering would satisfy their growth needs. Volunteers whose regular employment did provide oppor tunities for psychological growth were more motivated by other potential rewards of volunteering.

A survey of a stratified sample of patients in six different hospitals in the eastern United States compares the patients' perception of hospital volunteers with related hospital services. Volunteer programs are found to be perceived as having a stronger impact than the related formal organizational patient support programs.

A study to evaluate the effectiveness of a community hypertension program by the Red Cross in Greater New York hypothesized that trained lay volunteers providing screenings and appropriate referrals is low-cost ($1.44 per screening); and that it is feasible to provide knowledge training to lay volunteers possessing the communica tion skills necessary to establish a climate conducive to effective counseling thereby addressing the limited availability of professional volunteers compared to the num ber of hypertensives needing assistance in achieving blood pressure control. The twelve participants in the counseling program pilot achieved an average reduction of 20.4mmHg systolic and 15mmHg diastolic.

Volunteer Community service by offenders is often required at various stages in criminal justice processing. Although most criminal justice practitioners and the community in general view community service-restitution as punishment, the author argues that volunteer community service in pre-trial diversion can be a means of personal growth and development. Community service is approached from a volunteer development perspective based on adult education and volunteer program management principles. Many adult offenders undergoing transitional change are not aware that learning through the volunteer community service expe rience, with appropriate supervision and guidance, can assist in adaptation and adjustment to change situations in their lives. Often, as a result of community ser vice, defendants learn more about themselves as people and realize their potential as human beings.