Monday, August 17, 2009

News flash: It's bad to waste a volunteer's time

My temper feels a little heated tonight. I may get my red head fired up from time to time, but it's usually for a good reason. See, I'm no martyr, but for the third time in very recent history, I have gone out of my way on an evening or weekend to work off my creative petutti at the request of a local nonprofit (three different ones), only to find out either...
  • a. they have also asked someone else to do the same thing and forgot to share that, or
  • b. they weren't really sure they wanted what they asked for after I had gone to the trouble of following through or
  • c. they want something vastly re-done because they accidentally left out a major part of it.

I totally don't mind volunteering my time. I need to volunteer my time. We all need to. (In fact, I spend most of my free thoughts wondering if I will ever do enough to earn my place on this earth at this time...we're here to serve baby.)

BUT, and here comes the but, if you don't have your mess together enough to be courteous enough not to waste other people's time, don't even ask for help. Ironically, each of these charities are king whiners about never having enough volunteers. I wonder why.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

weekends are for relaxing, fun, and getting ones head straight for the coming week ahead..let inconsiderate groups have their on weekend to finish the shit they expect others to for free.. or better yet charge lets say a catrillon dollers and i bet they could get organized enough to finish a project monday thru friday

bernthis said...

I volunteer at a local hospital. It does get a bit frustrating when there are a ton of us there and there need not be

Erica@PLRH said...

I try to always be considerate of our volunteers' time. If they know their time and skills are used wisely, then they will continue to volunteer.

Anonymous said...

From the other side of the fence, volunteers are notperfect either......they volunteer to prepare for something that others then have to rely on and it doesn't get done etc.....Relax, if you aren't needed, cheerfully say until next time and now you have the gift of some unexpected free time

Mixed Reflections said...

Anonymous, thank you for your perspective. I work for an agency that also relies on the help of volunteers. In all of the cases I was referring to here, I have actually spent painstaking hours on projects and completed them, only to find that those who asked me to do the work were not clear about what they wanted, and thus, the time I spent and the end product were not used. I'll think twice about spending time with these agencies again.