While I was thinking about what to write this week, I saw a friend’s Instagram story where she talked about the mindset of volunteering. I noticed it was starting with these sentences: ‘’Don’t volunteer with expectations. You will collapse….’’
The wording was far from being polite and wasn’t informative.
I was extremely shocked and upset. Especially when you worked together on projects with more than thousands of volunteers. And, I know that all of our volunteers had different expectations. In fact, they should have expectations!
Moreover, those expectations were actually their motivation.
I hoped my friend had a good reason for posting something so extreme and unkind but I decided to make things clear to the volunteers I worked with before, the volunteers I am working with now, and the volunteers I will work with in the future.
So I am dedicating this blog to the Positive Impact Association’s awesome volunteers everywhere in the world and all other volunteers.
Understanding the Terms
In primary school, even middle school mathematics lessons, I would never understand why the teacher would write the definition of the titles when starting a new subject.
What is the meaning of verbal expressions with numbers? Won’t we make four transactions at the end of the day? Why are these definitions important? It didn’t take me long to understand the reason.
The way we define a word, profession or phrase changes the meaning we impose on it. Therefore, our expectations will also change. So let’s always look at the definitions first.
According to the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, volunteer means ‘’to offer to do something without being forced to do it.”
Very true! That’s the best part of working with volunteers because most of them are self-starters who want to do something for their personal development, something for society, or something that can touch peoples’ lives and positively affect the world.
Merriam- Webster defines philanthropy as ‘’an act or gift done or made for humanitarian purposes’’ and cites charity as a synonym.
We hope that the number of philanthropists increases. We also believe that our volunteers will turn into philanthropists in the long run.
But for now, they are volunteering.
Britannica defines ‘’slavery’’ as a condition in which one human being owns another.
A slave was considered, by law, as property, or chattel and was deprived of most of the rights ordinarily held by free persons.
Slavery is an archaic concept that would never be accepted today.
Now we are ready to go.
Approaching With the Right Expectations
I have been working, participating, volunteering for more than 10 years in various non-profit organizations, projects and events. Frankly, I have confused the differences between volunteerism and philanthropy and sometimes the people I volunteered for confused me.
Philanthropy is an amazing and positive thing that uplifts people. But it is always good to know what you intend to do. From my experience, when I have not approached a project with the right expectations, I received poor results.
From time to time, it even kept me from wanting to volunteer again. But luckily, I met the right people to bring my volunteering enthusiasm back. I am grateful to those people and projects and today, we are doing our best to make sure our PIA volunteers get what they expect from us.
It is very simple. We just make things clear on what we can provide for our volunteers and we work very hard to ensure they actually have it. This establishes trust in the work environment and has allowed us the opportunity to work with fantastic volunteers from all over the world.
We are ready to work harder for more.
Code of conduct: Volunteerism is NOT Slavery
The desire to volunteer by participating in a social responsibility project, an event or an organizational team is pure and sincere. Most of the students are very excited to have new experiences with the project they will be volunteering for.
I was one of them. Unfortunately, sometimes this excitement and goodwill can be abused. Here are some things to think about based on my own experiences.
Let’s say you volunteer for a project you are excited about. Other than learning all the details about the project, don’t forget to ask these questions from the beginning;
- What are you expecting from me in this project?
- What should I expect from you in this project or after this project?
If the answers are satisfying for you, go for it! Volunteering is the best way to gain new experiences, networking and most of them feed your soul:) Do not forget to check our dear Luka’s inspirational volunteering experience.
Do not let anyone take advantage of your goodwill but also don’t let anyone down.
This is a mutually beneficial relationship so try to balance it.
This is an open call to all the organizations and volunteers out there. Organizations, treat your volunteers the right.
This is one of the easiest ways for establishing the right mindset for both volunteers and organizations.
As an organization, if we tell our volunteers from the very beginning what we expect, then they can gauge for themselves if we can meet their expectations.
Volunteers, make sure the organization is the right place for you.
With this simplest method, we will increase the positive perception of volunteering and the number of volunteers in the world. We can do it:)
Please feel free to share your volunteering experiences with us. And, if you are looking for an awesome volunteering environment, please do not hesitate to contact with us.