Move Over, Archimedes

Remember Archimedes? He was the Greek techno-geek in the 3rd century B.C. who said "Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth." Archimedes was describing the ability of a lever to magnify the power applied to an object.

I guess that's what us would-be city planners start out as: technicians looking for a place to stand so we can give the problem a really big whack. And when it dawns on us that there IS no place to stand, we do the Rodin thing: put our fist against our head, sit on a rock and Think.

Well, some cities have succeeded in moving beyond that. "If we can't use a solitary guy with a big stick, what if we used lots of guys with smaller sticks?" they ask.

It's working: cities are institutionalizing the strengths of volunteers. With the addition of a volunteer coordinator position and an handbook, they are able to impact a lot of different problems simultaneously. It's not surprising to find dozens of cities, large and small, with Volunteer Handbooks that cover the waterfront: jobs, rules, application procedures, timekeeping requirements, legal issues and program positions, for starters. We're not talking only minding the Visitor Desk, either; we're talking about positions requiring a full range of abilities and skills across all the departments in the City organization.

In Washington state, they have even institutionalized the process of setting up volunteers. Their web page gives examples of the structure and documents needed to get going with more than 20 specific examples from different cities in the state.

Why all the attention on this? They cite the ICMA (a professional association for City Managers)  IQ Service Report on Volunteer Programs as saying that for every $1 invested by a local government in volunteers, it can realize as much as $10 in benefits. And that was in 1999. The city of Bellevue, WA, a boomburb of Seattle, has a population of just under 125,000 people. They use the services of more than 8,000 volunteers each year; volunteers outnumber city employees by more than six to one. Some cities, such as Boca Raton, FL, mention the great value of having their volunteer structure in place when disasters or special situations occur.

Richmond, VA, describes how their "Sign Up Now" Volunteer recruitment program began with a few citizens who "just asked if they could help." Their report contains a paragraph labeled "Unintended Consequences," which describes how the first project, the positive press and the interest of the community have leveraged the original effort many times over.

Archimedes, when you use a lot of guys, maybe it's not so hard to find a place to stand.