Volunteering: the school of hard knocks (part one)
It’s currently national volunteering (appreciation) week in Australia. These acts of kindness enable many causes to be able to create the impact that they’ve set out in their missions. Missions to create a better world for us to live in.
I’m constantly inspired by the amazing humans who give back to the community. And grateful to those who selflessly pay it forward. We should absolutely be celebrating vollies!
Amongst the good feels, there’s also a dark side to volunteering that I never expected.
In this post, I’m going to be covering a few thoughts around sustainability, culture and martyrdom. My background is in creative tech (and thus, where my volunteering experience has been), so I’ll also be drawing some parallels between toxic vs healthy workplace cultures in tech to the culture of volunteering that I’ve had exposure to so far.
My personal volunteering experience* has been:
- Volunteering my time to speak or help in other ways at various web meetups across Australia, women in technology events, advising on best practice panels and helping at not-for-profit conferences
- As part of the national body for the web industry — volunteering to be on the national committee, running monthly meetups and a national roadshow event
- Creating Mixin — a debut not-for-profit conference that I was proudly part of the organising team for, bringing a world-class event to little, often forgotten, Perth town…
- Plus also regularly mentoring some soon-to-be and fresh graduates
- And, I even initially got in touch with PetRescue to volunteer (where, today, my career path has joyfully taken me to. Quite unexpectedly, really!)
At one stage, I was spending on average, more than 30 hours per week towards something volunteering related ~ ON TOP ~ of a full-time role leading a fast-paced digital agency and, just to add one more cherry, as a co-founder of a startup.
I struggled with getting more than 4 hours of sleep per night, maintaining healthy habits… and, you guessed it, there was definitely no balance. As a result, my valuable relationships with friends and family also suffered.
*Strangely, I never really thought of these as volunteering activities at the time. In hindsight, I happily did many things — unpaid — to give back in as many ways as I could.
Why OH WHY did I do all of this to myself?
Honestly, things didn’t start off so wild. I responded to a few calls for help and assistance here and there and thought, “Sure, I’ve got some time and it’s the right timing for me to give back to the community and help!”. So, the story of my ‘extra’ all began.
It was as if little by little, this had just become my new reality without me realising. It all happened so gradually that I didn’t even notice that this ‘extra’ world had taken over my life. I was flying on autopilot… and I was flying high. Sleep-deprived and surviving off the dopamine hits of the good work.
“If I am busy and needed, then I am important” - A lie said to me BY me, convincing myself that all was well
Dopamine is known as the feel-good neurotransmitter, right? Well, turns out that it’s double the good feels if you’re doing it all for a good cause… good + good = double goodness. Math ✅
So, this takes me to the 4 lessons that I learnt — the hard way — from my time in volunteering.
Hard Knock #1:
Tying my self-worth to what I give-back is problematic…
And a danger to my health.
Did I burn out? Yes. No surprises there. But, did that stop me? No. Absolutely not.
There was a bigger issue — I had tied my own self-worth to these projects. I had found a passion but I was over-consumed by the culture of high performance and output. I unknowingly placed this above and beyond my own health. I was so desperate to make a difference and a positive impact that I didn’t — couldn’t — stop to realise the impact it was having on me.
These good feel projects began to define my existence and in part, my identity. And a sure way to set anyone up to fail. I was trying to do too much, too soon. And this became my undoing.
Hard Knock #2:
Dopamine is an addiction.
And I craved more.
I was addicted to the feeling of being needed.
Not only was I feeling positive feedback from the acts of doing the good things (because there were VERY good things happening!!) but also the words of encouragement that I received from doing said good things. I was making a difference. I was part of making an impact. I was good at it. I was being praised for it.
And so… this became my fix.
But alas, all of the dopamine was one thing, however, I ultimately just wanted to make a difference. I wanted to change the way the whole tech ecosystem in Australia was working because there were so many things that fell short. So, I took on more and more. Just… one… more… thing… won’t hurt, right?
But, when you feel like the only one putting in the hard work and the sacrifices (whether that’s true or not), it’s easy to see how the good feels and can turn to bad feels quite easily.
This leads me to the next hard knock.
Hard Knock #3
The task was just too big.
Also, No one asked you to be the martyr.
During my time volunteering at [a national body representing the web industry], real change was simply too hard to make happen amongst a handful of people volunteering only a couple of hours per week to the cause.
It was disheartening to put ‘above and beyond’ effort in when the load felt unevenly distributed and the only way to make any impact was to keep doing more. Add to that, all the knowledge leakage that was experienced as valuable members of the committee churned was a real shame.
It’s not that the intentions weren’t good from the folks involved, it was simply that those good intentions were not enough to create the impact we were after. This wasn’t any individual’s fault.
The truth was that the organisation needed to invest in the future. Real investment (and people) to help build the community and industry that we knew it could become. Relying solely on volunteering to make these big-scale changes happen was a short-term plan that was never going to be sustainable.
As a result, I tried to do more than was possible.
I took volunteering to a whole new level. My high achieving, go-getter mindset set my targets high and I was willing to sacrifice a lot (e.g. my wellbeing). To me, at the time, the price was worth it and I silently suffered, because who would do this important work, if not me?
But, reader, the price that I paid was devastatingly too high.
The friends and family who I loved but neglected… a business that I put as the second priority… and my health which I placed as the lowest priority. I was just too close to the price tag to realise that at the time. The debt is real.
“Girl, this is bigger than you. You can’t help the world if you can’t even help yourself.” - An uncomfortable truth bomb said to me BY me
I needed to reprioritise. By taking additional work on I was only cloaking the deep flaws of the organisation’s lack of investment systems and processes.
“We reward volunteers who are over-achievers. The ones that throw their entire lives out of balance each year in the name of volunteering. The harder the volunteer works, the more likely they are to get an award.
We shine the spotlight on them as our organization’s best, brightest and most effective. We incentivize their competition against other volunteers for the Martyr Leader Of The Year Award.
We reward those that give 110%. Their blood sweat and tears. Their determined commitment. Those that put volunteering above their families and relationships.
…
Those watching the martyr leader’s rise to glory sit in awe and say, “I could never do that. I don’t have time.” Or, “I can’t give 110%. I can only give an hour a week.”
And we wonder why more people won’t step up to replace these bright, shiny, martyr leaders.” - https://velvetchainsaw.com/2011/04/07/dont-know-jack-about-working-volunteers/
Hard Knock #4
As good as your intentions can be, volunteering is not sustainable
Unless you set it up for success in both the short term and long term.
If my experience of Mixin was anything to go by, this was a not-for-profit endeavour that was never, ever short of heart 💜.
On top of our full-time roles, a mixed team of seven designers and developers put thousands of hours (plus all the sweat and … sometimes …. tears that go with it) into creating something that had never been done before for a community that was longing for — but lacked exposure to — world-class learning opportunities.
Year one was a roaring success and our keen audience was yearning for more. In the beginning, we’d planned for at least three years of events. Sadly, a few logistical curveballs created challenge-upon-challenge for us being able to do a consecutive second-year event.
So, we delayed for a year.
But, by then, our sparkle had begun to fade. In that short time, our worlds had changed. Career directions and responsibilities grew. A final team update made it impossible for us to continue.
As much heart and passion as we had for it, it was just no longer a priority when compared to our high-demanding jobs, the bills we had to pay and what it cost for us (not just financially) to continue with the mission. It was heartbreaking to say farewell when we had so many more grand plans, but it simply wasn’t practical for us to be able to prioritise above our respective workplaces and careers.
Although the logistics ended our journey, the decision to fold actually came with some relief.
We. Were. Tired.
“Volunteers burning out is bad for the continuity of an organization. It’s called martyrdom. It leads not only to the exhaustion of the volunteer themselves, but to the decline in the vitality of the organization itself in the long-term.” — https://london.iabc.com/news/how-to-put-an-end-to-martyrdom-in-volunteering-and-make-helping-out-irresistible-for-everyone/
I had to learn these lessons the hard way.
There was no one there to tell me that this could happen. No one around to help remind me to set boundaries to prevent the inevitable.
Things can be better!
No one (else) should have to experience these hard knocks.
……
👀 Keep reading part two of Volunteering: the school of hard knocks!
A shoutout to The (writing feedback) Collective that’s recently formed to provide helpful feedback and suggestions! Special thanks to Corey Ginnivan and Dominic Sebastian for their valuable input for this particular post 💫
