Reply to Volunteering ain't all it's cut out to be.

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Reply to "Volunteering ain't all it's cut out to be."

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m just starting to do this but as a pro bono attorney. My experience had been good so far. There’s a ton of need and not as many people willing to do it.

Does it have to be with an org? Is there something you’re good at that would be useful to people? If you’ve done your own taxes, VITA clinics need people. If you’re good with kids, you could volunteer at a head start or other subsidized preschool. High schools always need people to help kids with college applications. Are you handy? You could fix stuff for people who don’t have enough money to pay. Help pull weeds for a community center or YMCA. Volunteer to coach a team at a school that needs it. Be a lifeguard - there are never enough of them and that keeps community pools closed. I do tenant-side eviction cases for free.

Look for the work that’s not sexy and that needs somewhat more commitment than a Saturday here or there. Try not to expect people to express their gratitude - you’ll be disappointed a lot. Just do the work that helps. [/quote]

you know, this is such an apt observation as well as advice.

A number of my HS friends are retiring and a few have started volunteering. One of them complained to me about how they volunteered on one campaign, her skills were not used, and she refuses to do that again. Well, I get that if the campaign could have used those skills and I also get that campaigns want to win, so they are going to focus on the tasks that will do it = getting folks to the polls and that includes phone calls and door knocking.

If you do not care if the candidate wins, then insist the campaign use your skills, even if not needed. But if your goal is getting good folks elected to office, then help campaigns do that.[/quote]

Oh man, this is so common on campaigns. A lot of people who want to help with social media and policy when what we really need is door knocking and phone banking. Ground game is what really makes the difference in campaigns.

I now work in the non-profit sector and volunteer management is hard and not everyone is good at it. For events, you recruit more volunteers than you will need because people always bail, and then more people than you expect show up on the day and you are scrambling to find work for all of them. This happened recently at an event my work hosted - some of the volunteers offered to help with staff roles likes registration, but they don't have the required security clearance to use our database. I could tell some of the volunteers were getting frustrated we weren't giving them more to do.

With office volunteers, you recruit someone with a specific skill set and spend a lot of time training them, and then they get a new job and can't volunteer anymore.

I think you just need to keep trying until you find somewhere that is a good fit, and where you feel needed. [/quote]

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