Many organizations rely on volunteers. However most volunteers are useless. Why are they useless? They stop showing up or don't do the work. Is there a way to get volunteers actively engaged? Yes, it involves building community or getting something out of it. We need to learn from political organizations. If you volunteers for a campaign or a local political club, you are immediately put to work, immediately. It may be mindless work but you are put to work, no excuses. if you want to volunteer you have to physically show up and work. It's that simple. Additionally there are always a lot of volunteers so they build community. Those are the two most important aspects, making people show and doing something and building community.

Even if you look at open source developments, most of the work is actually done by very few people. Most of the community contributes by providing minor bug fixes when they tried to do something themselves and it screwed up. very few people are actively engaged in development. its more about necessity and then the community to get feedback from your peers.

At the end of the day the only way to ensure volunteer work outside of luck (passion) is force your volunteers to ante up and get involved. If not, you will waste a lot of time.

The same holds true for commission only sales forces. If you don't actively engage and keep people motivated they fall off the bandwagon fast. You need to keep throwing internal events that build community, enhance training and show them that you care. Even if you don't really care, you must show face or you will lose your sales force unless you get really lucky. I've made this mistake, I built a commission sales force and didn't insist on proper follow up and it fell apart. I've also started a number of volunteer organizations and seen volunteers quickly drop off (even with community, engagement and follow up).

At the end of the day it comes down to charisma and organization. If you are organized and can mobilize and can inspire you should be fine.