Media Clipping — Saturday, May 1, 1999, The Daily News

Burnout plagues volunteers

By Rachel Boomer

Nova Scotia's nonprofit groups say they're stressed out, tapped out, and fed up after years of doing more with less.

"Like all nonprofits, we're expected to produce firstrate programming with a second-rate budget," Yvonne Manzer, of the Youth Alternative Society told a roundtable conference on volunteering in Halifax yesterday

Poorly paid staff are working through their breaks and burning out, while nonprofits spend more time fundraising and less time serving the community she added.

"Something's got to give."

A report released in February by GPI (Genuine Progress Index) Atlantic found volunteering across the country has declined 4.7 per cent since 1987. In Nova Scotia, volunteering dropped by 7.2 per cent per capita.

The decline was steeper in Nova Scotia because the province had more than the national volunteer average, the report's author, Ronald Colman, explained yesterday He said community service work would be worth $1.75 billion, or 81,000 paying jobs, and it has been expected to pick up the services governments have cut back in past years.

"For the first time, we now know that the volunteer sector has not been able to pick up the slack," Colman said.

"The largest number of volunteers are highly educated people ... but with downsizing and cutbacks, firms are demanding more overtime. Because of that increased overtime, volunteer hours are getting squeezed out."

The remaining volunteers and nonprofit agency staff are burning out, participants said.

Copyright © 1999, The Daily News