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How to ... volunteer
September 24, 2007 12:02 AM
Sometime ago (back in August) Colin Ross sent me an article How to ...volunteer by Guy Browning from The Guardian Weekend on Saturday August 18, 2007.
How to ... volunteer interested me because I have worked in a voluntary capacity for a couple of organizations. I have been a volunteer for Birmingham Focus on Blindness, Josiah Mason College Students Union, Liberal Democrats, Millennium Volunteers Youth Forum, Oxfam, University of Wolverhampton Students Union and West Midlands Area National Union of Students. So far I have avoided getting involved in the Electoral Reform Society, European Movement, Republic, United Nations Association or Unlock Democracy, which are groups I am a member of. The thought of getting active in some of these organisations has crossed my mind but so far I have avoided it.
While I understand that Guy Browning is a humorist, the two different types of volunteers Guy Browning describes should sound familiar to anyone who volunteers or works with volunteers. However I am not sure if the two different types of volunteers Guy Browning describes are actually different people I think that what happens is that at different points in our lives with different causes we behave in different ways. I believe that when I first started to participate in Oxfam campaigns, when I first joined the Liberal Democrats and when I first joined a student union it was my passion for the cause that that made me want to volunteer my time however since especially in terms of the time I give to the Liberal Democrats it has become my inability to say NO that has meant I have given up my time, however it is also the arrogance, pride and smugness in me that makes me believe that I can do something better then others which keeps me giving up my time.
Guy Browning also mentions that the golden rule is to never attend Annual General Meetings (AGM) however in some organisations it's the people who don't attend AGMs that find that in their absence they are volunteered for certain roles. Guy Browning is absolutely on the spot when he says that if you are involved in a voluntary organisation you must train yourself not to say, "Well, if no one else will do it . . ." this is how most people end up doing things for voluntary organisations. A lot of the time meeting when tasks are being "shared" are a race to see who will crack first or go the longest without being given a task.
Leaving a voluntary organisations can be very difficult, volunteers often feel very guilty about withdrawing support from organisations when that need their help. I certainly feel guilty of how I have not remained involved in Birmingham Focus on Blindness or Oxfam. I try my best to make up for it by donating whatever small amounts I can whenever they send me any literature about their financial appeals. However the reasons I stopped volunteering with Birmingham Focus on Blindness and Oxfam have to with what little spare time I had but with regard to Birmingham Focus on Blindness it is also about how most of the staff that I worked with when I volunteered there have left and moved on to other things.
In the last paragraph Guy Browning describes how people react to you when you first arrived you could be met with people who have a 101 ideas about how you could help or people may just be too busy to notice you. It is important that people working with volunteers have something for their volunteers to do as soon as possible otherwise they could easily be lost to other causes but there is also a need to strike a balance to ensure that volunteers don't get the feeling they are not doing enough.
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