Volunteers in the Public and Nonprofi t Sectors 121
from other volunteers or paid staff, newspaper articles and advertisements,
radio and television spots, presentations before community or professional
groups, and tapping the relatives and friends of clients have proven to
be successful methods for recruiting volunteers. Virtual recruitment and
volunteering is also becoming more common.
Recruiting volunteers can be difficult. Brudney (1993) found an
increase in competition among public and nonprofi t agencies for volun-
teer talent. Contributing to the diffi culty in recruiting volunteers is the
nature of society today. The United States ranks among the highest on a
global scale in the percentage of employees working fi fty hours per week
or more. Many workers are fi nding it diffi cult to balance job and family
demands without adding volunteer work. Many Americans believe that
the time pressures on working families are getting more severe (Taniguchi,
2006). The increased pressure on working adults with families has forced
many nonprofi ts such as the Girl Scouts of America to target new audi-
ences for recruiting volunteers. One poster to recruit Girl Scout troop
leaders developed by the Girl Scout Council of Atlanta shows a girl with
green hair and fi ngernails, and another poster shows a girl sporting a tat-
too of the Girl Scout trefoil on her back. The message is, “ Sure we wear
green. But a lot else has changed. ” The posters are designed to attract
young, single volunteers in their twenties and thirties, not the stay - at - home
moms who have anchored the volunteer corps since its inception (Wyatt,
2000). As a result of the many economic and demographic changes affect-
ing communities, some Girl Scout Councils wanting to provide services in
rural and urban communities and unable to recruit volunteers have begun
to pay “ program specialists. ” The Girl Scouts of West Central Florida
developed the job of program specialists. They must meet the standard Girl
Scout leader qualifi cations and go through the same training as a volunteer
leader. They can work up to nineteen hours a week, the starting pay is $14.86
an hour, and they are paid for mileage, but do not receive fringe benefi ts.
Without their paid leaders, many girls would never become Scouts.
Other nonprofi ts are rethinking the assignments they give to volunteers
in terms of time, location, and length of commitment. Many communi-
ties have established volunteer banks where volunteers can be assigned
to projects that do not require a long - term commitment to the agency or
require volunteers to work scheduled hours each week.
Virtual volunteering has become more common. Virtual volunteering
is the use of information and communication technology to permit
some part of the volunteering process to be carried out at a distance