I have always tried to do my part in my community, whether it was helping my children’s school at holiday parties, organizing SignUpGenius for my son’s rugby tournament travel, or joining a neighborhood support group that helps families impacted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions.
Most recently, I was selected from the more than 1 million applicants to serve as a volunteer for the FIFA World Cup 2026 in my home city of Atlanta, Georgia. Talk about a well-oiled machine when it comes to a volunteer organization. Everything from the application process and interviews to training and uniform selection has been impeccably organized, communicated, and branded. For global sporting events like the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics, volunteers are their lifeblood.
Throughout Ryan’s conversation with Megan Buzby earlier this week, I kept coming back to her experience working with volunteers at The Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration (AFTD). For her organization, it is important to recognize where people are in their lives, physically, mentally, and geographically, and meet them in that space to maximize their contribution of time. Without the many hours contributed by volunteers, their mission of providing research, awareness, support, education, and advocacy would not be possible.
Based on joint research by the US Census Bureau and AmeriCorps, a 2024 report indicated that 28.3%, more than 75.5 million) of the U.S. population age 16 and up participated in formal volunteer programs. They also noted that nearly double that number engaged in informal helping, such as supporting a neighbor, doing something in their community or lending items they have around the home. The comprehensive survey, conducted every two years, shows that both formal volunteering and informal helping have returned to pre-pandemic numbers and are rising.
With news of the Giving USA 2025 report on charitable donations, which indicates that contributions remain strong but come from a declining pool of donors, especially in higher education, the outlook for donor pipeline building might sound grim. Between shifts in donor behavior and budget cuts across higher education, universities are beginning to question the return on investment (ROI) of alumni engagement programs and are focusing more on fundraising from the top of the donor pyramid.
While volunteering doesn’t always lead to giving, time is money, as the old adage says. In fact, Independent Sector’s 2026 Value of Volunteer Time Report estimates volunteer time at a rate of $36.14 per hour. As revenue declines and budgets tighten, could volunteerism help institutions fill the gaps and sustain their mission?
In my roles as an advancement leader, I have often struggled to help alumni and constituents find meaningful ways to give of their time that also support the work of our institution. We had a tendency to create projects to keep them busy so we could cultivate the relationship, but didn’t link directly to the core purpose of our program.
While some universities, like Stanford and the University of Michigan, have created robust programs, alumni associations, and advancement teams, alumni associations and advancement teams could improve the ROI on their engagement programs by creating or expanding volunteer opportunities that contribute to the FTE (full-time equivalent) of staff at their institutions. If engagement teams move beyond chapter leadership and community service, they could mobilize constituents as on-demand contributors who extend the capacity of teams across the institution, from advancement and marketing to career services, admissions, and other student services.
For nonprofits and community groups that don’t have formal structures or a roster of ready volunteers, capacity-building organizations like Catchafire serve as strategic partners to develop and offer volunteer opportunities that are accessible to people outside their networks.
There are obviously many factors to consider when designing volunteer programs, and they don’t come without the need for staffing and financial resources, but volunteerism could be one remedy to shrinking donor pipelines across the sector as institutions ride out the current economic uncertainty and declining donor participation.
Courtney Stombock’s career has spanned 25 years and two continents, working in many facets of advancement at public and private institutions in the US, UK, and France. At The American University of Paris, Courtney and her team are rethinking what it means to engage and secure philanthropic investment from culturally diverse and diasporic alumni, families, and friends.
