Attracting volunteers and facilitating voluntary contributions are a great source of self-sustainability for many development initiatives because:
- Volunteers can strengthen initiatives with their knowledge and free work. Like voluntary contributions, these can help to fill gaps that the Initiative itself could not without significant investment.
- New collaborations can open paths for further partnerships beyond the initiative.
- Volunteer work can trigger further local participation and negotiation by demonstrating the benefits of solidarity and collaboration with the example.
- Incorporating volunteers helps to diversify sources of support for initiatives. This helps the initiatives to reduce their dependency on a single one of them, and thus, helps to remove burdens for the initiative to operate sustainably.
- Volunteers can serve as bridge agents between their background network and the initiative, intensifying the quality of their collaboration.
Related strategies:
♣ Voluntary contributions
See also:
“Bridge” agents Motivating and capitalizing on local ownership