And when disaster strikes, they are already there. Volunteers bring diversity and special abilities. When you recruit staff you can only get those who are looking for a job. With volunteers you have a much wider choice. You can get shop owners, university professors, computer specialists, housewives, students or pensioners.
Volunteers are cost-effective .
Volunteers are not paid, but organising them costs money. Even so, work done by volunteers has been proven 2 to 8 times as cost-effective as work done by staff. Clearly, we need professionals in voluntary organisations too, but with the purpose of facilitating voluntary humanitarian action. This is why it is so important to improve our volunteer management, adapting organisational structures and upgrading the skills of staff in order to inspire more voluntary action. More voluntary action is needed to meet the challenges that humanity is faced with today.