Friday, May 21, 2010

The Heart of Volunteerism

You may hear that ‘volunteerism is a thankless job!’ Sad but true, to some extent. If you do not know how to hold on to your volunteers, you can easily loose them.

If your manager volunteers you at work, it is not true volunteering. It is delegation. Volunteering comes from the word volunteer, and it involves a self-directed, motivated approach to wanting to help someone. If you are arrowed, you were probably delegated. Delegation requires the manager giving away to the staff some degree of authority, while still taking the responsibility. Most managers do it the other way around.

Here are ways to be a useful volunteer:

1)    Choose to do it, not because you were told to do so.
2)    Find your passion, or area that you can be passionate about.
3)    Apply your strengths.
4)    Use the opportunity to develop your areas of lesser competencies.
5)    Seek other volunteers out and identify their strengths.
6)    Rally other like-minded individuals and find a common cause and band together (start a tribe).
7)    Create opportunities to accomplish and achieve results of various descriptions and intensities (example: Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games; charities; fund-raisers).
8)    Engage values like care, consideration selflessness, generosity, performance, responsiveness, respect, and recognition.
9)    Do something else when you experience volunteer fatigue, or when you want to experience and learn new things.

Go out and volunteer, seek other like-minded people, and do your best!

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