Sebastian Moleski wrote:
I've recruited and manged a great number of volunteers while working at a university. The main problem with them is that, unless they have some sort of alternative source of income/wealth, it's just not economically feasible for them to put in more than a few hours a week.
I'm not sure actually putting in a lot of time is a problem, but I do agree that employees are better for some things, mainly because of consistency. If it's a job that *has* to be done every single week reliably, then an unpaid volunteer is not necessarily the best choice. I've worked on Wikipedia-related things for much more than 40 hours some weeks, but I could not *commit* to working 40 hours every single week unless I were being paid to do it, because I have other obligations for my "real life" that sometimes pop up. As a volunteer I could commit to "x hours over the next year", even where [x] is large, but I couldn't commit to being available at any specific time or even specific week. Since presumably a consistent volunteer coordinator would work better than one who was available 80 hours one week and 0 the next, I can see the advantage of hiring someone for the role.
-Mark