Why Volunteer?

It’s five thirty am and I’m writing this from a thronging Luton Airport departure lounge. It strikes me that if I picked any house at random in the south-east of England, I’d almost certainly find it empty, the occupants being here at the airport with me. If only I’d chosen to be a burglar rather than a coach, I’d be minting it.

I’m travelling for a few days in my capacity as a trustee for a small charity. I must stress that this is not a glamorous task, in fact I’d really rather not be doing the travelling, but volunteering for the charity more generally is important and fulfilling, and as with most activities, there is good and bad. You just need to make sure that the good outweighs the bad.

I’m looking for a volunteer.  Hands up!

Volunteering is one of my recommendations for a healthy, balanced life and it’s good for work on a number of levels.

No job perfectly matches our skills, interests and values. Taking on the right voluntary role allows you to derive satisfaction where work may not offer it. As a sole trader, my charity role allows me to work with others and to take on leadership opportunities.

For someone in employment or looking for a job, having an alternative source of achievements can certainly enhance career prospects. A recent example was that of an accountant, qualified overseas who was struggling to find work in the UK owing to a lack of local knowledge and experience. My suggestion was to find a charity that would allow her work on a part time basis. She gets experience, they benefit form her expertise and skills.

If we’re lucky our job allows us to learn about something we are genuinely interest in, but that’s not the case for everyone, and even if it is, most people have wider interests than their job caters for. Working for a charity allows me to develop my interest in this other area.

In a similar vein, there are activities we enjoy doing, but opportunities for those activities are not always available in the job we have. Charity work may be the answer, enabling us to do some of the things we like outside of employment.

Ideally our values would be shared by our employer and in the work we do, but that’s not always the case. While a charity usually stands for clear enduring values making it easy to support if you share those values, a company’s values are often less clear, and they change depending on economic circumstances and the beliefs and ideals of its leaders. It’s common for a person to join a company whose values in terms of purpose and behaviour they share, yet after a period of time those values diverge and the person finds their beliefs at odds with those of their employer. Finding a charity that allows us to live more authentically according to what we feel is important can solve that problem.

I know many people reading this will be thinking, “that’s all very well but if you have a busy job there’s no time for volunteering”. They’re right, not everyone can or wants to give their spare time away, but if you are one of those people, I encourage you to think about the wider benefits you might derive from voluntary work, not just for your personal well-being, but also for your longer term career goals.