The housing association has a "volunteer policy", and the application pack was 34 pages in length (I think that has changed). They have a lot of volunteering effort. But there is a real divide between those are "official" volunteers and those who contribute to the community in different ways. What bugs me is some will get awards, get their picture taken, get invited to special events and others will just on with it.
Wikipedia started as a volunteer effort. Wikimedia UK wanted to label some people as volunteers, since those volunteers will take take part (online and offline we assume) at workshops, competitions, hack days, GLAM events etc etc run by the organization.
I think I understand, though my brain may be frazzled by spending all of today debating the finer points of Wikimedia movement fundraising. And I empathise, because I've often found myself spending more energy on my "spare time" commitments (including this one, sometimes) than I do on my day job.
What it says, in summary, is:
* The most important thing to our organisation is the impact of people who are contributing their time voluntarily
* Staff exist to support the work of those volunteers (not replace it)
* As part of the appraisals or our staff, we're going to talk about not only how they are supporting volunteers, but whether there is anything that they're doing that volunteers can and are willing to do, even if this is a bit less convenient for the staff member concerned.
Really, we are going to great lengths to find staff who "get it" about the Wikimedia movement in general and this in particular. It's probably the biggest single thing we care about when recruiting staff.
So I hope this goes some way to addressing your concern. Happy to talk about it at a meetup sometime (and I'm sure other board members would be as well)
Chris