Thanks to Peggy Hoffman for starting off the conversation about the nomenclature of volunteerism. See post here. I've been thinking about this issue for quite some time. The issue is this:
It seems that we've narrowly defined what is and what is not "Volunteerism." And that we may benefit from broading the definition to include other forms of non-market work by citizens.
Sometimes I wish that Wikipedia would follow me around so that I could turn to it and ask it questions in the middle of a conversation. No, it’s not always right. No, it’s not the utopian vision of collaboration that some wish it were. But it’s damn good. I’d be hard pressed to find a nonprofit organization that hasn’t benefited from Wikipedia being freely available at any time of day or night. Wikipedia is volunteerism for the Information Era.
Of course, we can support Wikipedia by giving a donation, but we can also support it simply by editing a page. Moreover, we can support endeavors that are like Wikipedia. What’s like Wikipedia? Open source software. What is the most efficient and value creating volunteer workforce in existence today? It's the open source community. Being an "open source coder" is synonymous for "software development volunteer." We can support it by using open source software and by contributing code to open source projects.
In addition, we can start thinking about how we can use these Wikipedia/Open Source-like models in the field of volunteerism. The private sector is quickly coming up with brilliant new ideas that take advantage of the amateur’s passion for participation. Threadless, Innocentive, iStockPhoto. These are companies that have dominated their niche by relying on peer production. These models work. Let’s explore them.
And let’s call Open Source and Wikipedia “volunteerism.” There’s an issue of nomenclature that flies under the radar. Why isn’t the Open Source movement the single greatest volunteer accomplishment? I won’t mince words; it is the single greatest volunteer accomplishment. Why don’t we herald it as such? Why don’t we model volunteer efforts in other domains after it?
In my opening analogy, I said that discovering new forms of volunteerism was like a Magellanic voyage. But of course, Magellan didn’t discover anything. He came across lands where people had been living for centuries. Open Source has been here for a long time. However, the field is not linked decisively enough with volunteerism. Magellan named almost every place he visited and these names still exist today: the Pacific Ocean, Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia. The process of naming a thing for one’s community can have transformative effects.


