Monthly Archives: April 2024

graphic representing volunteers at work

Mandatory community service can be amazing for the “voluntolds”

3 Replies

One of the things I have really disliked in working with people who manage volunteers is those that turn their noses up at people who have to do mandatory community service. “They aren’t volunteers, they are volunTOLDS”, they smirk. They will go so far as not inviting people doing community service to volunteer recognition events, not inviting them to follow them on social media, even not giving them the t-shirts, pins and other swag they give to “real” volunteers.

People volunteer at nonprofits for a variety of reasons and MOST of those reasons are NOT selfless: people volunteer to explore careers, to meet people, to have experience to add to their résumé, to meet a class requirement, because their religion tells them to, because they are skeptical about something and want to see first hand what the work is about, and a whole host of reasons that aren’t at all “selfless.”

I am an advocate for treating community service folks as VOLUNTEERS, just like everyone else. I have the same high bar of participation for them as I do any volunteer: they have to fill out the same paperwork, they have to go through the same screening and orientation, they have to adhere to the same policies, etc. Not all of them make the cut – just like other people who want to volunteer. But if they do, then I treat them just like all the other volunteers. And the result is that EVERY person who has done mandated community service with me has volunteered for MORE hours than the court or their class required.

This brings me to a recent experience: a friend who works at a nonprofit has a son who did something reckless and stupid and illegal, and ended up having to do mandated community service as a part of his sentence. She was at all of his various meetings with law enforcement and other officials in the restorative justice process, along with the friends who had been with him, and she talked about how he and his friends stared down at the ground, looked as humiliated as all the officials wanted them to, mumbled through answers, etc. She organized the community service hours he and his friends had to do at the nonprofit where she works – they worked alongside teens from a church to clean out the yard of an elderly, disabled homeowner. It was an all-day, very physically strenuous task. Had you been there, as I was, you could not have told which teens were from the church and which were the ones mandated by a court to be there. Days afterward, the teens had their follow-up meeting with officials, and did their usual mumbling and shame-staring, until… it was time to talk about the community service experience.

My friend said that the teens lit up, shoulders and heads straight, talking all at once about what they had done, seeing how much this homeowner had needed helped, how after a few hours they could see that they were changing her life for the better. One of them said, “I think I want to do this as my job – I want to help people like this!” They wanted to know if this was “real” volunteering and if they should put it on job applications.

Community service doesn’t always result in something like this. Volunteering doesn’t always result in something like this. But when it does – wow.

Also see:

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.

No foolin’: Things to do now so you don’t leave your best work behind when you leave an employer

Leave a reply

I had meant to post this blog in December, because the following is a terrific activity for the days between Christmas and New Year’s Day, at least in the USA, when business at most nonprofits is usually at its slowest. But this activity is something you need to do twice a year anyway, and you are the best judge on when it’s best to do it:

Make digital copies of reports, proposals, project designs, graphic designs & other work you are particularly proud of at your current employer, that you think are the best examples of your work or that you might want to use elsewhere (and the company are working for hasn’t copyrighted it or patented it) and get those copies on your own computer at home.

Why?

You will want all this for your professional portfolio to show potential employers (changing all information to maintain confidentiality, of course), as well as to have it as a resource to draw on at other employers in the future.

If you are laid off or dismissed or your employer folds, you will be SO happy you did this.

I once created a template in Basecamp for managing the volunteers at a nonprofit employer. It was gorgeous, from a volunteer manager’s perspective: I populated it with policies, to-do lists (and ways for everyone to show their progress on whatever they were working on), standard responses to all sorts of various questions and situations, role descriptions, links to essential videos, and so much more. It had a shared calendar and a shared chat space. It was a place new volunteers could get up-to-speed/on-boarded quickly, current volunteers could find answers to questions before they asked me, volunteers could chat in-the-moment and keep our email boxes from filling up, and we could all know what everyone was working on. Its potential as a knowledge base would grow every week it was used. It was a masterpiece, from an intranet perspective. And just as I launched it and volunteers started using it, I separated from the nonprofit. It was a sudden departure, and the executive director not only immediately removed my access to online systems, but also, in a moment of anger and irrationality, she deleted the Basecamp project entirely – I couldn’t even ask a volunteer to screen capture the work for me.

I tried for weeks to recall and recreate so many of those materials. I had some success, but there are a couple of resources I have never been able to reconstruct.

Luckily, much of the other material I had created for this client was created at my home, on my own computer, and then transferred to work, so I still had copies of it for my portfolio and to use when creating something for new employers. But I still think about that intranet…

Don’t let this be you!

Also, don’t rely on the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive to always have the backup of the web site materials you will need. I love the Internet Archive beyond measure, I use it for my work at least once a week, and I donate a bit every year to show my appreciation. But I know that nothing is forever and, a few times, an old version of a web site I have looked up many times there is suddenly gone, without explanation.

Also, please note that I’m not encouraging you to steal from your employer. But look through my blog and my web site: well more than half of the material was born out of work I was doing for an employer. I’m proud that my blog and web site advice are based on real-world examples and, often, my own, specific experiences and first-hand observations. It means that most of my advice, including The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, isn’t something I’ve only thought of: I’ve also tested it, or I’ve seen it tested firsthand.

Adhere to legal agreements, of course, but remember that what you create is yours, and you may need it down the road.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.