Friday, Dec. 5, is International Volunteer Day, and it kicks off the U.N.’s International Year of Volunteers for Sustainable Development.

The theme this year is “Every Contribution Matters”. It seems obvious, but, rather surprisingly, not everyone in the sector gets it. Many organizations still pressure volunteers to take on larger, more complex or more committed roles. Few have set up a system for micro-volunteering, never mind creating coffee-break volunteer opportunities.

And yet, we all know small actions multiplied can have a massive impact.

I once worked with a charity that started running a monthly clean-up event along local rivers. Most of the volunteers only gave an hour or two. They didn’t join committees, they didn’t come back every month and many didn’t even stay long enough to share in the doughnuts at the end of the day.

But when we added up the total hours, the number of filled garbage bags and kilometres of riverbanks cleared, that short-term help created a cleaner river system than the community had seen in years.

It’s a good reminder that what looks like a tiny drop can become a whole tide when enough people join in.

Even so, many organizations still insist on long shifts and high commitment. I get it. Cleaning riverbanks is worlds away from, say, running a hospice. It’s easy for people to drop in and pick up a bit of trash. Not so easy when there are up to ten hours of mandatory training to visit a patient in their........

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