Who Will Keep the Lights On When the Volunteers Go Home?

There is a particular kind of job that exists in almost every small town.

It comes with meetings after work. Emails before breakfast. Text messages while you're making dinner. Social media passwords you somehow became responsible for. Posters to design. Minutes to read. Events to organize. Websites to update. Grants to chase. Complaints to answer.

The pay is terrible.

Actually, there is no pay.

Welcome to the strange and increasingly complicated world of small-town volunteer boards.

I sit on them.

And perhaps that is why I have started looking at our local business associations differently.

From the outside, it is remarkably easy to see what they should be doing.

They should advertise more.

They should promote tourism better.

Their social media should be stronger.

The website needs updating.

Why wasn't this event promoted?

Why didn't anyone tell us about that?

Why aren't they doing more for businesses?

Why don't they just—

That last sentence is particularly dangerous.

Why don't they just?

Because somewhere on the other side of that sentence is usually a human being doing something for free.

The Invisible Workforce of a Small Town

Small towns are held together by an extraordinary amount of unpaid labour.

Not just business associations.

Service clubs. Agricultural societies. Arts organizations. Festival committees. Sports associations. Historical societies. Chambers. Beautification committees. Fundraising groups.

Look closely enough at almost any beloved community event and eventually you will find a handful of exhausted people standing behind it.

They have jobs.

They have businesses.

They have children who need rides somewhere.

They have aging parents.

They have mortgages, laundry, groceries, appointments and lives that occasionally require their attention.

And somewhere between all of those things, they agreed to sit on a board.

Often because they love where they live.

That's the part we don't talk about enough.

We have professional expectations of organizations that are sometimes being operated by people squeezing volunteer work into the cracks of already very full lives.

We compare their websites to professionally managed tourism organizations.

We compare their social media to businesses employing marketing teams.

We expect immediate responses because that is what the digital world has trained us to expect.

The internet never closes.

The volunteer does.

Or at least, eventually, they have to.

Small-Town Volunteerism Has Entered the Algorithm

There was a time when supporting a local business association might have meant attending meetings, organizing a street event, printing a newsletter and putting up posters.

The job has changed.

Today, a community organization is expected to have a functioning website, active social media, current business listings, professional photography, newsletters, online event promotion and near-instant communication.

Someone needs to photograph the event.

Someone needs to make the Reel.

Someone needs to answer the Facebook message asking a question that is already answered on the website.

Someone needs to update the website.

Someone needs to remember the password to the website.

Someone needs to figure out why Instagram suddenly stopped talking to Facebook even though, apparently, they are owned by the same damn company.

And tomorrow, someone needs to do it all again because today's post has already disappeared beneath the algorithm.

We have quietly transformed volunteer community service into something resembling a part-time communications position.

Except nobody added a paycheque.

And Then Comes the Criticism

Criticism itself isn't the enemy.

Organizations should evolve.

Boards should listen.

Members paying dues deserve to understand what their association is doing and where their money goes.

Communities should absolutely ask whether organizations created to serve them are still serving them well.

I've asked those questions myself.

But there is an important difference between accountability and forgetting the humanity of the people doing the work.

A volunteer can be committed and still miss something.

A board can care deeply and still move slowly.

An organization can need modernization without the people who kept it alive for years having somehow failed.

Sometimes the website isn't outdated because nobody cares.

Sometimes nobody has had Tuesday night free since March.

That doesn't mean we stop asking for better.

It means perhaps we start asking a second question alongside it:

What would make better possible?

The Generational Question Nobody Wants to Ask

This is the part I keep coming back to.

Who does this work next?

Many community organizations are already asking how to attract younger members and younger volunteers.

But look at the proposition we are offering them.

Give us your evenings.

Bring your professional skills.

Manage our digital presence.

Help organize our events.

Answer criticism publicly.

Attend meetings.

Take on responsibility.

Be available.

And, by the way, there is no money.

Also someone on Facebook may be furious with you by Thursday.

It's not exactly a compelling recruitment campaign.

Younger generations aren't necessarily less community-minded. But they are entering adulthood in a very different economic and cultural reality.

Time itself has become expensive.

Many households need multiple incomes. Entrepreneurs are reachable almost constantly. Parents are juggling work and family schedules while carrying a digital workload that didn't exist for previous generations.

The boundaries between work and home have become increasingly thin.

And we are asking them to donate the resource they may have the least of:

time.

Perhaps the question isn't why younger people aren't volunteering enough.

Perhaps the question is whether we have built a model of volunteerism that is sustainable for the people we expect to inherit it.

Maybe We Need to Rethink What "Helping" Looks Like

There is another peculiar thing about volunteer organizations.

A community can contain hundreds of people with opinions about what should be done and five people actually available to do it.

That math eventually becomes impossible.

Maybe the future of small-town organizations isn't simply finding another generation willing to inherit the same workload.

Maybe the structure itself needs to change.

Smaller commitments.

Project-based volunteering.

Paid support for specialized work when budgets allow.

Shared resources between community organizations.

Better technology.

Clearer expectations.

More people agreeing to do one small thing instead of three people agreeing to do everything.

And perhaps businesses themselves have a role here too.

If you want your association to promote you, give them something to promote.

Send the photograph.

Write the paragraph.

Answer the email.

Attend the meeting occasionally.

Share the post.

Volunteer for the event.

Community organizations cannot create community participation on behalf of the community.

At some point, we all have to show up.

The People Behind the Boardroom Table

Being involved with local organizations has changed the way I see them.

I still notice what could be better.

I still believe small towns need to think bigger about tourism, business development, communication and how we tell our stories to people beyond our own postal codes.

Volunteer status shouldn't make an organization immune to change.

But sitting on the other side of the table has made me much more aware of what happens before the poster appears in the window.

There was a meeting.

Someone took notes.

Someone made phone calls.

Someone asked for quotes.

Someone filled out paperwork.

Someone unlocked the building.

Someone stayed late.

Someone answered the email.

Someone went home to a family that had already been waiting for them.

And they weren't paid for any of it.

There is something deeply beautiful about that.

There is also something fragile about it.

Small towns have survived for generations because people have repeatedly decided that something mattered enough to give away a piece of their lives to keep it going.

The hall.

The fair.

The parade.

The downtown.

The festival.

The association.

The thing everyone assumes will simply happen again next year.

But traditions don't organize themselves.

Communities don't run themselves.

And volunteer organizations cannot survive indefinitely on the goodwill of the same handful of people.

So yes, expect things from your local organizations.

Ask questions.

Bring ideas.

Push them forward.

But perhaps before asking, Why aren't they doing more?

Ask one more question.

Who is "they"?

You may discover that "they" is a business owner answering emails after closing.

A parent working on a poster after the kids are asleep.

A retiree who somehow became the keeper of seventeen passwords.

A neighbour setting up folding chairs on Saturday morning.

Someone who said yes because nobody else did.

And if we want these organizations to exist twenty years from now, the most important question may not be what we expect them to do for us.

It may be what we are willing to do with them.

Because eventually, somebody has to keep the lights on.

And eventually, the volunteers have to go home.