We’ve been working on some strategic planning lately at Points of Light Institute and, as part of that effort, have been looking at how social, demographic, economic, and technological trends might impact our organization and the larger volunteering sector.  We thought we’d share our thoughts and reach out for your opinions as well.

Starting this week our Points of Light blog is going to team up with HandsOn network’s blog to write specific volunteering information about strategic topics.  Today we will start to address social topics involving: Faith, Family, Community, Rural vs. Urban living, Sustainability in Businesses, and Workplace Volunteering.

While researching these social trends our strategy was to start analyzing the current U.S state of affairs, and explore upcoming trends in order to develop our own conclusions how to sustain evolving with the trends and remain competitive with the volunteer sector.

In order to perform our strategic planning we first had to define the 21^st century volunteer. The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines Volunteer as “persons who did unpaid work (except for expenses) through or for an organization.” At Points of Light we want to expand the dimensions of volunteer to reflect what a 21^st century volunteer really is; someone who is multi-faceted and one who represents part or all of these elements:

• Time –volunteering for service.
• Talent – using one’s special skills.
• Voice – influencing public debate and decision-making.
• Money – using one’s influence as a consumer and a contributor.

When looking into the social aspects of volunteering we thought a lot about overall U.S. social systems and public life and what volunteering looks like in different areas of life.  Specifically we focused on what volunteering trends look like in faith based programs and how that differs from secular volunteering; what family volunteering looks like and how certain members of a family are engaged; how communities form around volunteering; also environmental factors like the rural vs. urban community differences in volunteering; and finally about what workplace volunteering looks like, how sustainability plays a role, and how to make workplace volunteering not just a trend, but a norm.

Over the next couple months we will be discussing these topics and welcome outside input.  Feel free to leave comments and/or create discussions over our twitter @pointsoflight.  If you have suggestions for future blogs please email: listen@pointsoflight.org