Reason, Season, or Lifetime: On accepting the impermanence of volunteering
Will Foreman - Skilled Volunteering
Moving through life, we constantly seek connection. Whether that be with friends, family, colleagues or strangers, we crave it, in our conscious and subconscious. We nurture relationships, some lasting a lifetime, thousands fleeting. Sometimes it’s hard to accept people that leave your life. It’s even harder to accept when to let someone go. One thing does remain consistent with every relationship; everyone is on their own course.
One way of looking at relationships, which I’m particularly fond of at the time of writing, is being for a Reason, Season, or Lifetime. It’s a somewhat arbitrary division of an individual’s network, but it does help us to make sense of the way people come into and leave our lives. Different people in our lives fall into different parts of the division and move between them too. All three are important and have different effects on how we grow as individuals.
Reason: Short term relationships that help you reach a goal quickly based on a need.
Season: Interactions with a fair amount of depth that support you to resolve something over the course of a period of time (a couple of weeks, months or years).
Lifetime: Long term connections that endure, despite challenges, which also go on to strengthen us as a result.
Many people would like to volunteer in some way and assist a cause that is important to them, but one of the main reasons they don't is simply due to lack of time. Time is the most valuable resource we have and something that we all hold dear. Some are fearful that volunteering ties you to a cause forever: "How can I stop volunteering for a charity that really needs my help?". I believe this drive to volunteering means that any volunteering relationship (between volunteer and Social Good Organisation) is doomed to fail from the outset. There is absolutely no way that a meaningful volunteering relationship can be built out of obligaiton and fear of letting people down.
What I want to suggest, then, is a reframing of how we think about engaging with volunteering; accepting that your volunteering relationship, just like your human relationships, can happen for a Reason, Season, or Lifetime, and that it is up to you to choose which works for you. All three relationships bring real value in different ways!
Reason
This is where Link UP London can help – structured, flexible volunteering based around a specific need – short term projects with the option for more depth and connection after reaching the finishing line.
What's the benefit to the volunteer?
Allows you to contribute to the community in your own time and make a real difference to an organisation, it can also improve leadership skills, increase confidence and be a stepping stone into a promotion or a new line of work.
How does it help the Social Good Organisation?
This offers the opportunity to have high impact in a short space of time and boost an organisation’s capacity to have a greater impact.
Season
This is about engaging in something meaningful over a specific period of time, for example, participating in a Christmas season with Crisis or taking part in a month-long fundraising event.
What's the benefit to the volunteer?
Offers an amazing experience with like-minded individuals, usually in a team, and the ability to do something important and to give back.
How does it help the Social Good Organisation?
This provides additional support to an organisation when they are in need of increased capacity to achieve their goals.
Lifetime
Volunteering to support a cause on a regular basis can, if you want, extend for years. In this scenario, framing time and volunteering is extremely important. With clear ongoing goals and an understanding of responsibilities and priorities, these relationships will go on happily and continue to benefit with deep connections.
What's the benefit to the volunteer?
Provides lifelong friends and sense of family/community while doing something that is meaningful for others.
How does it help the Social Good Organisation?
This type of volunteering provides a stable source of support for organisations which allows for longer term planning; however, it is usually, but not always, focused on frontline service delivery.
The real beauty of this framework is that is completely up to you to decide which type of volunteering works for you and where you are at in your life. It also helps make sense of how you as a volunteer (or Social Good Organisation) sit within a volunteering relationship and how to manage your expectations and the expectations of those around you as a result.
For some, volunteering is purely a 'deliverables' driven engagement, for others it is about creating strong lifelong friends. The important part in all of this is making sure you know what you want to gain from volunteering and framing the relationship to match!
