The "Paid Volunteer"

Why hire  call responders?

Recently we hired a volunteer to serve during difficult-to-cover hours—a graveyard shift on the weekend. When some people heard this news, two questions arose: 1) why the need to hire, and 2) is not a ‘paid volunteer’ an oxymoron? The answer to the second question is “yes”, you cannot have a paid volunteer. We did not intend for that phrase to enter circulation! Rather, we now promote the phrase “paid call responder” (compared with a volunteer call responder), or “staff who serve as call responders.”

The answer to the second question, why hire call responders, requires backfill. For the last decade, our shift coverage for daytime hours has been approximately 50%, some years higher, other years lower. This compares to provincially- funded call centres that promote 24/7 assistance. How do they do it?

Some of it is sheer funding. With budgets twelve times Telecare’s budget, they advertise, attract, and train more people. And their pool to draw from includes all British Columbians whereas we draw from the 10% who show committed faith through personal testimony and church involvement. However even with these advantages, regional call centres still come up short in volunteers to cover all shifts. Their answer? They hire call responders to bridge the gap.

The Gap

That gap is due in part to volunteerism being on the decline in Canada. For example, according to Statistics Canada, in 2013 60% of Canadians volunteered either formally with an organization or informally by helping neighbors and friends. By 2018 that figure had dropped to 53%. We experience that trend as well. Over the years we have seen the number of regular responders drop from around 20 to 14.

Volunteer plus paid model

This explains why we have adopted a volunteer plus paid model. We are hiring people from within the volunteer pool to serve during hard-to-cover times of the day, such as evenings and weekends. And we are doing so carefully; volunteer hours still outweigh paid hours 8 to 1. While this requires increased funding, we have faith that God will provide resources as donors appreciate the importance of this ministry. 

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Photo by Dakota Corbin on Unsplash

In May...