Community service teaches individuals to help others in need and creates personal satisfaction for a job well done. People should volunteer in their spare time not only to help the community, but to also improve themselves. Learning the skills necessary and meeting the people involved are reasons enough to go volunteer.
Some organizations, however, feel they have the responsibility to pressure or even force people to volunteer their time to the community. Forced volunteers lose a substantial benefit from their work. They don’t realize volunteering can be an enjoyable pastime. The fun is hidden in a fog of obligation.
When I joined Alexander Hall Council a year-and-a-half ago, I understood the purpose of each individual position. The social chair planned the formal. The fundraising chair would put together a doughnut sale. The vice president warmed the chair underneath his or her rump. The philanthropy chair initially escaped my radar.
Soon, I learned the philanthropy chair was a person that tries to get residents and hall council members to give back to the community. That usually translated to pressuring us to give money to some cause or trying to organize us to go on a Habitat for Humanity trip. Although I advocate involvement in community service, hall council philanthropy chairs that employ these techniques and the like are ruining volunteering.
When people are pressured to volunteer by some organizer, they treat community service as an obligation. Students excel in procrastinating and avoiding our obligations. Our hall council treated community service the same way as any other obligation. We put off the events the philanthropy chair would suggest and avoided canned food drive attachments to events. Eventually, our hall council was doing as little service as possible.
Instead of treating community service as an obligation, individuals should discover the pleasure of the act. Our philanthropy chair could have tried to make the residence hall aware of service opportunities instead of trying to organize people. By giving us the clues, someone would eventually make the discovery, and that person would not just volunteer one time with Alexander Hall Council, but volunteer multiple times throughout his or her life.
In practical terms, hall council philanthropy chairs need to be gatherers and distributors of information, not organizers. They should post schedules of upcoming volunteer projects and suggest ways to donate to different charities. Philanthropy chairs shouldn’t be one of those people who go around with a clipboard in the dorm asking who is going to meet in the basement for a planned Habitat for Humanity trips. That puts too much pressure on people. They should let posted schedules and contact information bring the people to them.
Granted, my indirect approach to creating volunteers doesn’t bring the throngs of individuals to a glorified onetime community service event. If the purpose of the philanthropy chair is to put together a onetime event, then continue the organizing and pressuring. The purpose should be to create volunteers out of the residents. My suggestion makes the act exactly what it should be-voluntary not obligatory.
True volunteers aren’t people who break down one day and shows up to an event because they didn’t want their friends to feel bad. Volunteers enjoy what they’re doing and plan on continuing giving back to the community in the future. Only when people discover that community service isn’t an obligation but a fun pastime will they decide to become a volunteer.