Giving Expertise

Sunday, Oct. 30, 2005 By FRANCINE RUSSO

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The Transition Network is just one of a host of new nonprofits that are rethinking and retooling volunteerism. Civic Ventures, which sets up new programs to be run by existing nonprofits, is another. Some recent start-ups have carved out their own social-action niches and enlist their own recruits. Aaron Hurst, for example, founded Taproot in 2001 to fill a void he perceived for business professionals who wanted to make a civic contribution. "Five years ago," he says, "volunteer assignments were nearly all direct service: soup kitchens, tutoring kids, stuffing envelopes. Nonprofits were not focused on people contributing their skills."

Taproot tailors the volunteer efforts of its business experts to fit their lives. Each volunteer agrees to work five hours a week on a five-month project with a five-member team, each providing pro bono the same service that he provides for paying clients. Taproot member Candice Laxton, 54, a creative director in Menlo Park, Calif., helped produce a brochure for SAVE (Safe Alternatives to Violent Environments), an advocacy group for abused women. Laxton is typical of many boomers who, in earlier years, put some of their youthful activism on hold while establishing careers and families. "I'm an old '60s girl," she says. "Then I was out in the streets protesting, and now I feel I've come full circle."

"The leadership in volunteerism is not coming from traditional nonprofits," says Marc Freedman, Civic Ventures' president and co-founder, "but from a new generation of social entrepreneurs, boomers and preboomers who are taking matters into their own hands." Numbers tell part of the story. During the 1950s and early '60s, according to Leonard Steinhorn, author of the forthcoming The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy, there were about 5,000 IRS-approved nonprofits. "From the 1970s through the 1990s, when boomers came into their own," he says, "that number soared to nearly 45,000."

The ventures run the gamut from medical clinics staffed by retired doctors and nurses to legal clinics for disadvantaged children. New activities like these are attracting more men to volunteerism, which has historically been dominated by women. At Taproot, men make up 38% of the membership. The gender revolution--in which more women have gone to work--has reduced the traditional pool of female volunteers even as expertise-based assignments are drawing in more men. "Because we are now in a knowledge economy," Steinhorn says, "knowledge is what both women and men can contribute."

The new style of volunteer is typified by Washington trauma researcher Roger Fallot, 56. He donates time to Witness Justice, a three-year-old program that helps victims of violent crime with psychological and legal issues. He reviews information on the group's website and responds by e-mail to victim queries within his field. "This feels like it utilizes something I've spent years developing," he says, noting that his only hesitation about signing up had been the time required. But Witness Justice's program addresses this concern by routing every website query to at least three experts, only one of whom needs to respond. "I feel entirely comfortable saying I'm too busy now," Fallot says. "The flexibility is critical."