Overcoming Barriers to Involvement: Working Together: Community Involvement in America

Overcoming Barriers to Involvement

From Working Together: Community Involvement in America, A Summary of Recent Research Findings from a project commissioned by The League of Women Voters and conducted by Lake Snell Perry & Associates and The Tarrance Group

Flexibility in terms of time and activities, a sense of efficacy, and a local link to an issue are the keys to more community and political involvement, based on survey and focus group findings. Organizations seeking to mobilize people to become more involved in communities and in politics should address people's need for flexibility in their commitment and offer different options for involvement, including allowing people to bring their families with them to volunteer. Further, potential volunteers need to be reassured that they will not be wasting their time - either because the group makes poor use of their time and talents or because the group cannot accomplish its goals. Just as important, organizations need to understand that people are inclined to work with localized groups whose goals relate directly to local community issues. This research strongly suggests that organizers need to understand the community before they can mobilize people. Ideas for overcoming barriers include:

Practical & Information-Related Solutions

In their hectic lives, people do not want community involvement to be another rigid commitment to juggle. Organizers can deal with concerns about time by allowing people to schedule activities at their convenience (90% important for an organization to do; 86% more likely to get involved), work on volunteer activities from home (82% important; 84% more likely), work for an hour or two at a time (87% important, 81% more likely), and allowing them to get out of their commitment if they need to (83% important, 76% more likely). One woman in San Antonio commented, "If I knew an easy way, something I could do at home I could feel good about, that I could help somebody or some thing out, I really feel like I would," (Disengaged white woman, San Antonio). A man in Philadelphia explained, "[If] I could do it at my leisure.... In other words, I didn't have to make a commitment to...every night or every other night.... Sometimes I'm just too tired from work to want to do something," (Disengaged white man, Philadelphia).
Among people who want to become more involved, easing time pressures is particularly important. For people who are not currently involved but want to become more involved, the ability to work for an hour or two at a time ranks near the top as something that would make this group more likely to get involved in a community or voluntary activity, and (more than people overall) they feel the ability to work from home is an important thing to offer. For people who are currently involved and want to increase their involvement, the ability to work for an hour or two at a time and the ability to get out of their commitment if they need to are particularly important; for this group, the ability to bring a spouse or friend is also relatively important. Understanding how their work will benefit other people ranks at the top of the list of things that would make them more likely to get involved.
Given their busy schedules, people want reassurance that their work will make a difference and that their time will not be wasted. While potential volunteers rate as relatively unimportant getting a direct benefit for themselves or their family, they do want to know that their participation will have a beneficial impact overall. Organizers can address concerns about impact by explaining to people how their participation will benefit others (87% important, 85% more likely), or benefit the community (88% important, 83% more likely). As one Philadelphia man said, "It would have to be something that I - I don't want to say just benefits me - but that I would have to see some kind of benefit from.... I would have to see something positive out of it," (Disengaged white man, Philadelphia). A woman in Chicago said "If I am going to get involved then I want to see some results. You just don't want to waste your time. It has to be an issue I can make a difference in," (Disengaged African-American woman, Chicago). The degree to which participants in the focus groups responded to one another's personal stories also suggests that sharing experiences and anecdotes might be an effective way of illustrating and personalizing the potential impact of the group's work.

In the one-on-one interviews, activists cited educating potential volunteers about the problems the organization or groups seek to address as one of the most important elements in successful recruitment. Education provides people with information about problems they may not have realized are so dire; it gives them concrete ideas about things that need to be done; it makes them feel like they can do something about the problem because they know what needs to be done and where to go to get involved. For the activists, educating fishermen about oceanic issues, church-goers about homelessness, urban residents about inadequate transportation, women about reproductive rights issues, and homeowners about the indirect benefits of walking trails were all critical to gaining support and participation for their respective organizations.

Overcoming concerns about the group's credibility is also likely to increase participation. Organizers can allay questions about a group's credibility by providing in advance specific information about the organization or group (89% important, 84% more likely) and how it intends to accomplish its goal (83% important, 82% more likely). Said one woman, "If there were a group or a person that approached me and gave me a history and what...they did...from experience, then yeah, [I'd] go along with them," (Disengaged white woman, Chicago).

Tales of waste and corruption add to people's hesitation. Respondents in several focus groups mentioned examples of voluntary organizations, such as United Way, that have had ethical problems; as a result, they are concerned about group accountability. People are worried about wasting their time with an organization that they later learn is corrupt or ineffective. They say that before they become involved in a group they want to know that it is legitimate, that it has a clear mission, and that its goals are achievable. As one woman said, her greatest reservation "would be my fear that it wouldn't be productive. It would fall through and you'd be sitting there...not getting anything accomplished," (Disengaged Latina woman, Chicago)

This finding dovetails with some of the advice from several of the one-on-one respondents, who underscored the importance of sharing organizational history and successes with potential volunteers as a means of building trust and instilling confidence. Several respondents from organizations as diverse as the Parkways Foundation's Garfield Park Conservatory Project (Cindy Mitchell), the Pathways Foundation (Ed McBrayer) and the Women's Building (Susan Sands) mentioned the importance of a clear organization mission in attracting volunteers. People feel most comfortable about becoming involved in something when they understand the goal, and - for older and more established organizations - once they know that the organization has a record of effectiveness. Organizational reputation instills confidence and heightens the effectiveness of word-of-mouth reputation. As Ed McBrayer noted, "energy feeds on energy."

Choice promotes comfort. Organizers can deal with fears about lacking proper skills, wasting time and getting stuck by allowing volunteers to select their desired job from a list of tasks (87% important, 83% more likely). In the focus groups, most participants liked the idea of being given options: "I don't like to have somebody tell me that I have to do something. I mean I might not want to do that. I might not like to do that," (Disengaged Latina woman, Chicago).

Organizers interviewed in the first phase of the project emphasized flexibility above all else. Tom Schuman, the site director for a volunteer-run homeless shelter program called Public Action to Deliver Shelter, has rules for recruiting volunteers. These include asking people directly what they can do and when. When he is asked by a potential volunteer what they can do to help, he provides them with a list of specific, but varied tasks. He gives volunteers a detailed description of what each volunteer job entails and a step-by-step guide to performing their selected job. Schuman said that his biggest lesson has been recognizing that people have different interests and that, as a recruiter, he needs to be flexible in his offerings and in accepting whatever level of commitment people are willing to make. Niaz Dorry of Greenpeace also cited specificity and flexibility as critical to organizing. She said that when she started organizing fishermen, she had specific models and tasks in mind. Over the course of her work, she has recognized that different people have different levels of commitment; as an organizer, she needs to respect the limits of supporters' engagement and accept that activities might not be as structured as she initially wanted.

The Importance of Place

Locating and using local centers of community interaction is critical to generating support. As we learned in the one-on-one interviews, personal appeals made in settings that are comfortable (and often informal) are among the most effective means of generating new involvement. Greenpeace organizer Niaz Dorry went to the docks and to bars to recruit fishermen, both because that's where her target audience congregates and as a way of building trust. Susan Yolen of Planned Parenthood of Connecticut shared that Planned Parenthood now recruits at rock concerts, and is also trying to use the Internet and the World Wide Web as venues for recruitment. Cindy Mitchell of the Parkways Foundation approached people involved in Chicago's cultural organizations but previously uninvolved in parks issues or in economic development issues for help with Garfield Park, and then sponsored park garden walks to attract other, previously uninvolved people.

In the focus groups, people described the places they talk about most frequently with other people, and many of these sites are centers of informal community interaction. Particularly in the urban areas of Philadelphia and Chicago, focus group participants reported that they interact with their neighbors at local neighborhood stores and laundromats as well as at places such as their children's schools and sports games, churches, workplaces and on their streets. Said one man in Philadelphia, "You know, we're a neighborhood of little stores.... You go to this store to get rolls, this store to get pepperoni, this store to get meat. And while you're in the store, you know, the conversation just starts," (Disengaged white man, Philadelphia). Similarly, women in Chicago mentioned the grocery store, the library, the gym and the laundromat. In Alameda and San Antonio - cities that are more spread out - interpersonal communication occurs as neighbors pass one another casually on the street in local neighborhoods, as well as at workplaces and schools.

Crafting a Message

People respond to messages that emphasize the tangible difference people can make in their communities. Messages that include references to helping children and teaching children better values also resonate with both survey respondents and focus group participants.

The two strongest messages out of the survey include one message that urges people to take ownership of their communities, get involved and make a difference, and another message that talks about joining together to make a practical, tangible difference in the lives of those that are most important - our families, children, friends and neighbors.

These two messages about asserting ownership and making a difference are the most convincing to the untapped group of potential volunteers. Among those who are already currently involved, but want to be more involved, the message about making a difference in the lives of those that are most important and the message about using volunteer activities as a way to teach values to children rank as the top two most convincing messages.

Using politics as a motivation for community action is likely to be less effective. Disengaged people in particular do not connect politics - what they see as making deals, endless campaigning and empty promises - to community activity, nor is politics any sort of positive incentive to become involved in community voluntary activities. Some people in the focus groups implied that they had become involved in community-based activities such as cleaning up empty lots or ridding the neighborhood of troublemakers because local authorities had failed. However, capitalizing on politicians' failures is not an likely to be an effective message strategy for mobilizing people. Both in the focus groups and in the survey, using negative impressions of politicians and political institutions as a catalyst for community-based action registered little enthusiasm.
Issues related to children, including mentoring and coaching, and education are those most likely to mobilize the untapped reservoir of volunteers. Both in the survey and in the focus groups, children's issues stood out as a potential catalyst for motivating involvement for all demographic groups. In the survey, a quarter (24%) volunteered children and youth would be the issue that would make them most likely to become involved with (not just contribute money to) a group or organization. In all, more than a third (36%) mentioned something related to youth, education, or schools. In the focus groups, many participants named working with or helping children as something they would like to do, but have not.

I've thought about, like Children's Memorial Hospital... They help a lot of transient kids....[I'd like to] do something that would make the children more happy.... (Disengaged white woman, Chicago)

[Music] to win back the children and help them find the right way to go. (Disengaged African-American man, Oakland)

The Boys and Girls Club.... It's something that I think would be really worthwhile. (Disengaged white woman, San Antonio)

Using the issue of children to get adults more involved in activities is another potential avenue of mobilization. One dad explained that he got involved with delivering groceries through the Boy Scouts because his son asked him: "We went around one Saturday and put bags on people's doorstep, and the following week we went and picked them up," (Disengaged white man, Philadelphia).

A second tier of mobilizing concerns includes crime, drugs, theft, and vandalism (12%). In the focus groups, the notion of "cleaning up the neighborhood" was used by a number of respondents across groups to indicate the desire to control bad elements in the neighborhood and restore moral values.

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In sum, Americans are connected to and involved in their communities. Contrary to conventional wisdom, which suggests that people are increasingly disengaged from community involvement, there is a sizable pool of people who are interested in becoming more involved in their communities. However, in an era when people are faced with time constraints and competing priorities, groups and organizations that want to mobilize volunteers need to offer flexibility, information, a compelling reason to get involved. Most of all, people need to feel that their involvement will make a difference.