Volunteering is becoming less hierarchical and more collaborative. People are increasingly volunteering informally through online networks and sharing platforms. This has led to more distributed, leaderless organizations where people self-organize around shared values through online networks and cooperation without top-down coordination. Now the default way to get things done is through online networks rather than traditional organizations.

1. volunteering networks – working
beyond our hierarchical boundaries
@caseymorrison – CIPD conf June 2013

2. 72% of the adult population volunteered in the last
year (formally or informally)

3. There are 160,000 voluntary organisations in the
UK. 75% are entirely run by volunteers.
All have volunteer trustees.

4. highly educated

5. who are motivated

7. “The growing trend who find work outside
of the boundaries or seek to find new
solutions”
“This generation will accelerate the trend of
reflexive volunteering and create a new
set of volunteer based institutions rather
than join and support currently
established institutions and organizations.”
Howe and Strauss, 2000

11. So what’s changing..?
The dominant model
used to be: “group then
share”.
Now the dominant model
is “share then group”.
(= cooperation without
coordination)

12. The cost of information is low
Flikr
Wikipedia
Linx
Mysociety
Taylored e-books
Etsy produce
The long tail
The ‘reply all’ function on e-mail
Mass-customisation
Prosumerism

13. crowd accelerated learning

16. crowdsourcing

17. Cognitive surplus

18. Individual volunteer actions

19. six degrees of separation
The average distance of a single
twitter user to any other is 4.67
steps. (A study of 5.2 billion social media relationships)

20. Collaborative consumption
Our leisure time is
now ACTIVE.
Can we combine a love
for simple pleasures
with a new normal lack
of time and money..?

21. From collective to reflexive
volunteering
• Police telling volunteers not to get involved
• People unhappy with doctors advice

23. The Starfish and the Spider
• Leaderless organisations
• Wikipedia, Grokster and
YouTube.
• Alcoholics Anonymous,
Samaritans & the Scouts

24. The diffused organisational model

25. The default unit of doing things
used to be the organisation.
Now it is the network.
Distributed, non-hierarchical leadership of
people who share values = volunteering

26. Self-organisation in Hanoi Traffic

27. This..?
Or this..?

28. Volunteering is framework for
doing anything
• People are already doing things
• They want to do more
• The coordination of cooperation doesn’t fit