Volunteering, 60 thousand have stopped all activity for eight years now: the passion remains but also the pitfalls and treachery of bureaucracy remain

ROMA – Third sector bodies are increasing but the numbers of organized volunteering are decreasing. To identify possible strategies, Cesvot, the Tuscany Volunteer Services Center and the Tuscany Region are calling together the world of volunteering.

Because volunteers are decreasing. From 2014 to 2022 in Tuscany, it is estimated that there will be around 60 thousand fewer volunteers engaged in organized volunteering, which is equivalent to a reduction of 18%. (Istat data, Multipurpose Survey on Families). From Cesvot data it clearly emerges that the reduction in the number of volunteers is a process that began to occur well before Covid-19.

The focal point. The passion for volunteering remains but new needs emerge to which answers can be given for a possible change. It is essential to think of new ways of development that can overcome the pitfalls of excessive bureaucratization and corporatization which runs the risk of drying up the participatory spirit and the connection with the territory.

The numbers of the third sector in Tuscany. According to the Cesvot database, the ETS in Tuscany have increased (from 11,355 in 2022 to 11,556 in 2023, with a percentage increase of 1.77%) but the voluntary organizations (ODV) have instead decreased by 6.67% from 3,402 to 3,175. The number of social promotion associations (APS) increased from 5,537 to 5,728 with an increase of 3.45%. Added to these two types are 927 social enterprises, 21 philanthropic bodies, 408 other ets, 1,294 non-profit organizations and 3 mutual aid societies.

The risk of stagnation. At the Florence conference it emerged that third sector bodies are seen more as “producers” of goods and services than as promoters of relationships and social networks. Furthermore, the growing demand for the professionalisation of volunteers is generating a strong incoming selection process, which can act as a disincentive to participation. Organizational cultures to transform. The aging process generates extensive fears regarding organizational stability: there is not only the issue of “generational turnover”, but more generally, of the “turnover” in itself. The risk linked to excessive corporatization is the loss of contact with the community and the reduction of advocacy capacity.

What do ets need. “The ets – explains Luigi Paccosi, president of Cesvot, on the sidelines of the conference “Reading the change. Organizational culture, attractiveness, public and political role of the third sector” held today in Florence – need to regenerate their inspiring and organizational principles; to renew the meaning and motivations of their actions to be understood by citizens and potential new volunteers; to be able to exercise an equal and virtuous collaboration with the public body, especially in the new paths envisaged by shared administration. It is time that we all trigger processes together of transformation in defense of the third sector and Tuscan volunteers”.

The commitment of the Tuscany Region. “Reading the change in the third sector clearly fits into the need to read the change in our communities, to interpret old and new needs”, explains the regional councilor for social policies and the third sector Serena Spinelli to Repubblica Mondo Solidale. “As the Tuscany Region we strongly believe in the ability of the third sector to understand the needs of the territories and activate the energies present in our communities and it is in this direction that we are working”.

So what to do? The Florence conference outlined a sort of road map: starting again from the organizational identity of the associations, also to support an equal dialogue with public bodies; reflect on methods of involvement and new spaces for participation for potential volunteers; modify the “core business” of organizations to strengthen the power of advocacy, the ability to take on citizens’ problems by giving them a voice; focus on territorial animation and community building, increasing the ability to translate the capacity for social mobilization and listening into the territories.