Volunteering can go a long way in helping your local community, but volunteers should also think about how they themselves benefit from their efforts.
That’s the message Leadership Starke County Facilitator Jim Jessup shared last week, during Starke County Community Services’ Volunteer Recognition Luncheon. “Volunteering isn’t a one-way street; it should be a two-way street,” he said. “You should benefit, and whoever you’re working for or helping, volunteering for, should benefit, also. But there’s a question of ‘What’s in it for me?’ and there’s a lot that’s in it for you. Believe me, there’s a lot that’s possible out there, and you need to think about that, also. And when you’re encouraging people to volunteer, you need to tell that story, too.”
For example, he said volunteers have the opportunity to learn several new skills. “You can learn how to put on a dinner like this; that’s a skill that you can learn,” he said. “You can learn to work with other people. Again, you can learn some leadership by becoming a real decision-maker within the organization. You’re needed all over the place, and you can benefit from it. Obviously, there’s the friendship that you can make. You can learn new skills. There’s all kinds of benefits for you, also.”
Jessup also challenged local volunteer organizations to get younger people more involved in their activities. “We do a terrible job of getting our youth to volunteer and become active in the community,” he said. “We all do a terrible job of that. We need to get our youth much more involved in our community, in our decision-making, in our volunteering. They’re a huge resource out there that we forget about or we ignore or we don’t want to mess with it, whatever it is.”
He also recommended that potential volunteers find their passion, find what they’re good at, and consider what resources they can bring to an organization.
