Gwinnett County officials are embracing a citizens group’s call for an ambitious initiative to recruit volunteers to provide a variety of county services.
Under a proposal county commissioners will consider Aug. 16, Gwinnett would seek volunteers to provide 1 million hours of service by 2015 -- more than triple the amount of free labor the county already receives.
Commissioners also will consider establishing a formal recruitment program and hiring a part-time staffer to coordinate the effort. Though county officials have not provided an estimate of savings, the Engage Gwinnett citizens group believes the effort could eventually save Gwinnett $25 million annually.
County commissioners were receptive to the plan at a briefing Tuesday. They see it as a chance to expand services to a growing population at a time of tight budgets.
“I think this has a chance to be one of the biggest initiatives in the county in decades,” Commissioner Mike Beaudreau said.
Engage Gwinnett, a citizens panel commissioned to look for savings and efficiencies, spent months combing the county budget. The volunteer recruitment effort was one of its major recommendations.
“We felt like, let’s put a big idea out there, like 1 million hours, and imagine what the cost savings could be,” said Norwood Davis, chief financial officer at 12Stone Church and a member of Engage Gwinnett.
Commission Chairwoman Charlotte Nash said increasing volunteer hours would not mean current employees would lose their jobs. But it would allow the county to forgo future hiring while still providing services ranging from graffiti eradication to removing trash from stream beds.
The idea is to tap senior citizens and others to provide more and more services currently provided by paid employees or not provided at all.
Gwinnett already leans heavily on volunteers to deliver meals to seniors, to run youth sports programs and to provide some other services. Last year, volunteers donated about 320,000 hours.
But those efforts are largely concentrated in parks and social service programs, the county library system and a few other programs. And Gwinnett does not coordinate recruitment efforts.
That would change if the commission approves a formal recruitment program and adopts the 1 million-hour goal. Under the proposal, Gwinnett would hire a coordinator to work 30 hours a week with no benefits to coordinate volunteer recruitment. The $36,756 needed -- including salary and software -- would come from a vacant administrative assistant’s job.
Volunteers could free up employees for other tasks. For example, volunteers could deliver police vehicles to maintenance appointments, allowing officers to stick with regular duties.
Beaudreau said using volunteers addresses a key challenge faced by local governments in an age of austerity: “How do you get more work done without hiring more employees?”
Davis said the $25 million estimate is just a rough guess at what the savings could be.
County officials say there would be other benefits. Thousands of new volunteers would mean thousands more people engaged in and thinking about how to deliver county services.
“You’re putting people in a position to see our government in a different light,” Beaudreau said.
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