Principled Volunteering

After surfing through dozens of listings for a volunteer opportunity or searching with just the right Boolean phrases, you may feel you’ve found a good match for the contribution you’d like to make to your community or special cause, but what if you start the job and find out things aren’t fitting the ideal of your ideology?

Well, you first try to give the organization the benefit of the doubt. The staff is overstretched and working with a tiny budget. Or, a technical consultant left them with an unmanageable data system and documentation that seems to be written in a foreign language (see part two). These things certainly happen, but if you keep letting things go that really go against the grain of the nonprofit’s mission (and/or yours), you aren’t contributing your full potential to help them or your cause.

You could, like a lot of volunteers, simply skip out. It’s an easy option since you aren’t obligated like an employee or board member. However, since you also aren’t constrained by being an employee, go ahead and speak up! If you care about a particular community, do your best to protect and enhance it by sharing your observations and suggestions. If the staff seem too busy to listen, or they reply that the budget is too small to implement your idea, go to the volunteer coordinator and ask if there are other volunteers who may want to join you in solving this problem.

If these suggestions don’t work, stick to your principles and keep advocating a bit longer. If your environmental agency isn’t using recycled paper, show them where to buy some or go as far as refusing to make copies on the stock they have. Better yet, suggest ways to reduce the amount of printing and remind them that people who care enough to support an environmental cause take the time to notice exactly what you send them in the mail.

One of the best contributions a volunteer easily makes is bringing the nonprofit fresh perspectives and expectations for success. Expand the role described on that ubiquitous volunteer registration and fully give of your time and talents. If the staff or board doesn’t appreciate your intentions or isn’t able to accept your gifts, then it’s time to find an organization more aligned with or open to your vision. But, I suspect most organizations will appreciate your suggestion if you can at least make it to the testing phase. If the nonprofit later takes credit for the implementation, you’ve done a good job, because that’s a signal they’ve realized what a fabulous idea it always was!

Volunteer Creep

You’ve probably heard of project or scope creep, when a project starts developing limbs that regenerate as fast as my husband reaches for a cookie, but there can also be times when your volunteer work starts creeping into other areas of your life, and before you know it, you are losing important opportunities for your own regeneration. Of course, I thought about this post as I was stuffing marketing packets while riding down I-40 to a party.

I can talk to my husband, and usually do, while I’m doing just about anything, but I would have listened better en route if I wasn’t continuing the task for which I’d volunteered that morning. And, I would have been far more relaxed at the party if I wasn’t trying to remember which guests I targeted for one of those packets. I didn’t attend the party with that purpose; multi-tasking habits kicked in. The artist friends with whom I shared the packets were delighted to receive one (an opportunity to share their art with our members); however, what am I doing to myself when I don’t shut down this role to have a little fun?

I’m on my way to a crash… and not necessarily a vehicular one. So, after I slipped a packet next to each friend’s bag, I went and enjoyed the Altered Artists party. I couldn’t, though, resist buying a tool to make thank you cards for one of my nonprofits. It’s an owl!

*Husband sighs, reaches for another cookie.*

Website Held for Ransom

At least five nonprofits with whom I’ve worked are now wondering how to politely extract their data from a volunteer. These volunteers confidently took on important projects like website renovations and then drifted off, leaving the nonprofit wondering and weakened at the onslaught of application vendor calls.

It’s understandable how such a situation arises when the nonprofit’s staff is stretched to cover tasks for which they are not trained and have no time. When someone offers to “just do it” for them, they take a chance and silently rejoice that they can give that “Learn HTML in 24 Hours” text a stronger nudge under the bed.

But then the website doesn’t get updated, no one knows which tables to include in queries, and members receive two calls and get grumpy. Directors start reconsidering software they know is too complicated, but…at least it’s better than the old stuff… right?

Well, besides grant sources and donors having epiphanies that nonprofits really need operating funds, as a volunteer, I wouldn’t mind having a “contract” (at least a project plan) with clearly communicated deliverables, due dates and consequences. This option would have helped me many times, because over-worked staff members have often overloaded me with extraneous tasks when I simply offered to help with one detail.

So, thanks very much for your willingness to help, but please really do help.  Our nonprofits are struggling right now, and while there are enough people to do the work if we volunteer, it’s a challenge for them to manage volunteer projects. It’s up to us, the volunteers, to identify how we can BEST donate our time and not create more work for these generous citizens by stringing them along and holding project hostages. They can’t pay the ransom anyway.

Ghost Writer Perils

Have you seen the memorable end of Polanski’s The Ghost Writer in which papers fly down a tunnel of buildings, and we wonder what happened to the unnamed protagonist? Throughout the story, “Ghost” senses the peril of his latest assignment, not unlike (excluding murder) how I’m feeling about writing thank you’s for one of the organizations for which I volunteer.

While I love writing social media connections such as blog posts, which are obviously an organizational communication and for which I’m given a script or I’ve been personally involved in the endeavor, writing something to be signed by another person often makes me uncomfortable.

Perhaps I’m being naive wanting to connect with volunteers, donors and sponsors on a more personal level; however, I’d like to acknowledge the person’s or company’s value and experience by getting to know more than their name and address. So, today I suggested that if I’m to write these thank you letters, I’d prefer to be responsible for one particular group – those individuals and businesses I can get to know.

That’s one of the best things about being a volunteer; we can personalize our volunteer experience as well.

Virtually No Work Volunteering

If you want to help out your community but have absolutely no time left to squeeze out of your schedule, you can still make a helpful contribution. While you are squeezing produce, just think about whether that tomato is grown locally and then choose to buy the one that is.

To be even more effective, take just a few minutes to register with the NC Ten Percent Campaign, a new initiative from the Center for Environmental Farm Systems. They are promoting the importance of local food shopping, and their website is full of links to seasonal food stocks and more.

If you agree to report the amount you spend on local foods, you will receive a weekly email reminder. It’s a very easy way to support this important campaign, and I think it counts as volunteering!

Opt-in

I was told that attendance by 15 people for an event to which I invited 200 volunteers was a success compared to other years, but I’m still curious about whether those people actually even saw the invitation.

To test who might really be interested in hearing about volunteer opportunities and other news, I decided to create an opt-in form and promised participants they’d be the first to receive brief opportunity listings and links.

This new list could be very beneficial to volunteers who really want to help out with the animals. Animal care is our most popular request, and there is always a long waitlist for training and opportunities. All volunteers will still receive emails from their team leaders when there is an upcoming activity; however, I know the fast send-off format appeals to me (as a coordinator and recipient), and I hope others will enjoy keeping in touch this way.

Backpacks for Kids

New Triangle Volunteers meetup scheduled for August 7, 2010, at 2:30pm. CANCELED

From the 1-800-Volunteer listing: “Assist the Volunteer Center of Durham and DSS staff in providing over 300 children with new school supplies for the upcoming school year. Help with passing out book bags w/ supplies, giving out refreshments, and assisting with entertainment.”

Triangle Volunteers will be at the 2:30-5pm shift.

Volunteer No-Show Woe

This week, I had another volunteer not show up for admin duty, so my husband and I spent our Saturday printing hundreds of letters and stuffing envelopes for a fall fundraiser. I’ve changed the operating procedure to more precisely match new volunteers’ interests and limit these occurrences, but it will take a while to re-categorize older registration forms on which people offered to do work for which they may really have little enthusiasm.

I understand; I’m not particularly fond of these tedious tasks either. It is a lot more fun to, for example, work directly with animals or the population that interests one rather than perform the boring back-end tasks. I guess that’s why one university chair for whom I worked told me we should always offer sought-after food at staff meetings; ” the only way to get people to attend,” he said.

Well, at an upcoming event, we are going to have top-notch treats, and it’s not just to woo volunteers. Since this auction will feature foods made from locally grown ingredients, we are doing a demonstration tasting for our planning committee. Perhaps getting to taste test at local restaurants in preparation for this committee meeting will be our reward for stuffing so many envelopes!  Sounds fair.

Student Action with Farmworkers Party Volunteer Opportunity

Join the celebration by volunteering through 1-800-volunteer.com.

Friday, August 6, 2010
Volunteer shifts 3:30-6pm, 6-8pm, 8-11pm
Food, drinks, live music, dancing, kids games, bilingual
Center for Documentary Studies

James Hedges helps at Cold Stone Creamery fundraiser for Piedmont Wildlife Center