**Pattern Name:**
Volunteering
**Introduction:**
Volunteer work should be gratifying for the volunteer in the doing as well as in its effects beyond the doing. Clarity about the personal experience for the particular volunteer is essential.
**Illustration:**
**CONTEXT:**
I am afraid of large long lasting institutions. They seem to slip the traces of their original purposes and become cancerous enterprises intent upon their own survival at the expense of all else--including their founding purposes.
Volunteer organizations seem less inclined to this metamorphosis. Their work is done by those holding the originating purpose, rather than by increasingly alien agents of management. Detached management use the money and power to sustain the metasystem that pays their salaries and enhances their status rather than hold to the original purpose.
In a way remote managers are the worst kind of free riders. Than have the control and the money.
How are people ever successful at controlling management and the other forms of of free riding. That is the challenge of democracy.
What are the currencies at play in volunteering?
When volunteering is joined with open source licences then a critical mass can be reached, e.g. wikipedia, linux, and federated wiki. We are working toward a volunteer-based open-source repository of neighborhood development patterns.
**PROBLEM:**
**Forces:**
Peer support Peer pressure Limited time for volunteering Limited money compared to needs Generosity Creativity Freedom Need for money Fairness
**THEREFORE (SOLUTION):**
**Actions:**
**Consequences:**
**Known Uses:**
**RELATED PATTERNS:**
Volunteer can be unproductive and unfair?
We need to understand when, where, and how volunteer work can be as productive as paid work.
We need to understand how the free rider problem can be managed. _(Ostrom has much to say on this topic.)_
There is not enough money in circulation to pay for every human action done on behalf of others. Some gifts or volunteer “work” will always be needed.
What is better done through volunteer work and what is better done with paid work? That is the question.
What are the effects of monetary payment on workers and users? What are the effects of gift giving on givers and receivers? That is another key question.