Meet the Hidden Majority of Nonprofits: The All-Volunteer Organization

This is the third in a series of six NPQ articles that first challenge—and then change—the way we think about volunteers. In this series, The Unexpected Value of Volunteers, author Jan Masaoka takes on the underappreciated topic of volunteerism, provides some unexpected ideas, and points the way toward a public policy agenda on volunteerism.

A widely circulated statistic is that there are more than a million nonprofits in the United States—a statistic that sparks both appreciation and dismay.

But did you know that 69 percent of nonprofits—nearly seven in 10—have budgets of less than $50,000? That means that most of these nonprofits are all-volunteer organizations (AVOs).

We seldom appreciate their contributions. Through AVOs people conquer alcoholism, clean up beaches, care for the dying, coach youth soccer teams, advocate for gun control, rescue abused animals, raise their voices in song, publish literary journals, raise scholarship funds, preserve local history, serve as volunteer fire fighters, organize protest marches, exchange heirloom seeds, host visitors from foreign countries, change public perception about people with disabilities, help adoptees and birth parents find each other, and in thousands of ways make our communities stronger.

Some of these small-budget organizations do pay people modest amounts: Soccer leagues pay referees for Saturday games, historical preservation societies pay gardeners, and parent-teacher associations (PTAs) pay after-school art teachers.

But while these organizations sometimes pay people to perform tasks, they don’t pay people to manage. The job of management is done by the volunteer leaders, usually the board.

Why Are AVOs Important?

It’s important to first consider this question: Why are AVOs so important? The short answer: reach, ecosystem, voice, and glue that holds communities together.

Did you know that 69 percent of nonprofits…have budgets of less than $50,000?

What substance abuse organization serves more people than any other in the United States? Answer: Alcoholics Anonymous, an AVO. (The AA Central Office manages book sales and has no management authority over local groups.) To understand and strengthen the substance abuse ecosystem, it would be important to understand AA’s role in that ecosystem.

If you want to, say, fight censorship or advocate for literacy in your community, a good place to start is a local chapter of Friends of the Library—another important AVO that reaches thousands of communities nationwide.

Simply put: AVOs are a prominent way for people to form bonds with one another.

In response to the question, “Do you belong to an all-volunteer nonprofit?” many people say “no” at first. But after a moment or two, they often realize they do!

Consider these examples:

• Youth and adult sports leagues, such as a bowling league, a skateboard club, or a pickleball league
• Neighborhood clubs and associations, crime watch groups
• Clubs, hobby groups, or art societies, such as a quilting club or ham radio operators
• Historical societies, such as one caring for a historical home, a local history museum, or genealogical societies
• Event organizers, such as a local Martin Luther King Jr. Day march committee, an Apple Festival committee, or a Pride Day committee

Some AVOs are affiliated with and supported by large nonprofits with staff, such as hospital auxiliaries. Others may support public institutions like local PTAs and Friends of the Library chapters. Some are service clubs, such as the intergenerational Rotary Clubs; Soroptimists, which focuses on the economic empowerment of women and girls; or 100 Black Men, a Black-led mentoring organization.

While most AVOs engage in positive activities, there is nothing innately virtuous about the structure. The same structure has also been used by hate groups.

Surprising Legal Rules

Many NPQ readers know that nonprofits with annual revenues of less than $50,000 do not need to complete Form 990 and can simply file the easy 990-N (the 990 Postcard). Fewer may know that if a group has an annual income of less than $5,000, it does not need to register with the IRS and does not need to file the 990 Postcard. In addition, donations to unincorporated nonprofit associations, with less than $5,000 in annual revenue, are tax-deductible.

In response to the question, “Do you belong to an all-volunteer nonprofit?” many people say “no” at first. But after a moment or two, they often realize they do!

Many AVOs act as membership organizations, with active participants describing themselves as members, but legally they are not membership corporations and their “members” do not have legal rights.

Leadership bodies in AVOs are often called “boards,” “steering committees,” and “core groups,” and are typically composed of the most active, hardest-working members. But informal hierarchies may be the dominant—if inexplicit—system in place. (Of course, this can be true in staffed organizations as well.)

David Horton Smith, a leading researcher of AVOs and emeritus professor of Sociology at Boston College, prefers the term “grassroots association” and proposes this definition:

locally based, significantly autonomous, volunteer-run, formal nonprofit (i.e., voluntary [third sector, civil society]) groups that manifest substantial voluntary altruism as groups and use the associational form of organization and, thus, have official memberships of volunteers who perform most, and often all, of the work/activity done in and by these nonprofits.

How Do AVOs Define Themselves?

When it comes to identifying AVOs, try this: Ask someone in an AVO what they call themselves. Is it a nonprofit? An association? A club? A group? A voluntary service organization?

A survey of AVOs several years ago by the Stanford Social Innovation Review found that the most common answer among AVOs themselves was “we’re not a nonprofit because we don’t have staff.”

This answer—borne out anecdotally elsewhere—should be a strong wake-up call to those in the staffed nonprofit sector. We endanger the whole community ecosystem when we marginalize volunteer organizations and volunteers.

We should be asking: What are the AVOs in our neighborhood and in our field? How can we support them? How can we ally with them in advocacy? How can we let our staff know more about them and maybe encourage them to join? Maybe a local AVO lacks capacity to participate in local coalition meetings, but we can stay in contact with them and include them whenever possible.

Should an AVO Hire Staff?

A big question facing some growing AVOs is whether to strive to become a staffed organization. For some, there is a clear goal to “grow up” to be a large, staffed organization. Sierra Club, the NAACP, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and many other powerful organizations started as AVOs. Many national disease-focused nonprofits that raise awareness and funds for treatment and prevention do much of their work through all-volunteer local chapters. An AVO that decides to engage paid staff needs to plan to phase in that staff, as well as phase in changes in roles for board members.

We endanger the whole community ecosystem when we marginalize volunteer organizations and volunteers.

Many AVOs stumble when they first hire someone to manage the organization. For board members, after years of acting in both management and governance roles, it can be difficult to learn to switch roles and be both supportive of management staff and provide adequate oversight or governance.

Some AVOs opt for hiring an interim director or a program coordinator before hiring a director to make the change in stages. Others decide that they should hire fundraising staff rather than an executive director.

For other AVOs, staying all-volunteer is an intrinsic part of their mission and heart. In church groups, volunteer rescue squads, or PTAs, the all-volunteer character of the organization makes participation satisfying and rewarding to many.

People in AVOs need not feel that they “should” aspire to being a staffed organization. Rather than thinking, We’re all just volunteers, they should be proud to say, “Being all-volunteer is right for us.”

New Frontiers of Online AVOs

Increasingly, we may need to start thinking of noncommercial Facebook groups and subreddits (communities on the online forum Reddit) as AVOs. Some examples:

• Mental health and grief support groups
• Support for people with specific chronic illnesses
• Photography clubs and history clubs
• Prayer groups
• Immigrants from specific countries

One potential danger that online all-volunteer groups face is that, as they grow, they may be tempted to earn revenue through marketing and sponsored posts. Doing so can disrupt the group or be an annoyance for its members. Companies and marketers see opportunities to make money through online groups that they would never approach in person.

AVOs and the Meaning of Nonprofit

A theoretical framework that frequently underlies nonprofit sector thinking is that nonprofits arise in response to government failure and/or business failure. But this does not explain why AVOs exist.

AVOs are better understood as community assets that support civic engagement and civil society—in other words, they help people to organize to express themselves and support one another.

Eventually, some AVOs could become tomorrow’s large, influential, and powerful organizations that pass laws, change public opinion, and shape society. Others will continue to be the unnoticed glue that connects people and forms the foundation for strong communities. In a thousand ways, AVOs are the grassroots social networks and “keepers of the spirit” upon which so much of community cohesiveness and social change depends.

For more information, see All Hands on Board: The Board of Directors in an All-Volunteer Organization by Jan Masaoka, published by Boardsource.