Archive for the ‘volunteering’ Category

Are volunteers more dedicated than paid staff?

August 19th, 2008 in open source, volunteering, Would you do it again for free?

As many of you know I’m fascinated not only with how the open source software model works but how companies are unintentionally influencing the model by injecting money. I’ve shared my research and thoughts in my “Would you do it again for free?” talk.

So when I saw Volunteer staff are surprisingly committed, I was not surprised to see that volunteers were more committed on average than paid staff. I was surprised to see that the study authors decided that it:

could have to do with the fact the volunteers
tended to be older. “Older people are motivated to volunteer because of
their wish to fulfil an obligation or commitment to society,”

They forgot a few things like:

  • Were the paid staff volunteers before they got paid? Or were they recruited to the organization with a paycheck?
  • Do the volunteers get more (or less) say in what they work on?
  • Are the work conditions and hours the same for volunteers and paid staff?
  • Do they do the same types of tasks?

…and so on. I would bet that not all of the paid staff were volunteers first, and that while volunteers are drawn to an organization because they believe in the cause, paid staff are drawn because of the cause and the paycheck. Some might do it more for the cause and others more for the paycheck, but it’s not so clearly for the cause like the volunteers.

(Disclaimer: I was not intrigued enough to pay $28 to read the original article, so I just read summaries and abstracts.)

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Bill Gates’ thoughts on why we don’t give more to charity: we don’t know what to do

June 8th, 2007 in Career, philosophy, volunteering, Web/Tech

Bill Gates’ graduation speech at Harvard is well worth reading.  He uses it as a call to arms.  As his mother said, "From those to whom much is given, much is expected."  We all need to work on the world’s inequalities.  In his opinion the biggest obstacle to giving is complexity, "To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact" and we can’t see the solution and when we do we don’t measure the impact.  It’s not that we don’t want to help the dying children of the world – we just don’t know how to save them.

Market forces aren’t going to solve the world’s inequalities – we have to do it.

So we began our work in the same way anyone here would begin it.   We asked:  "How could the world let these children die?"

The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not
reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not
subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their
fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.

His advice is to spend a few hours every week learning about a problem, meeting others who want to fix it and working on solutions.  So – go save the world! 

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Why don’t people give more to charities? Part II: Values

June 8th, 2007 in psychology, volunteering

Yesterday I wrote about how one of the reasons people don’t give more to charities is because they don’t know the people personally.  I think another very real reason is that it’s hard to give aid to people whose values don’t match yours.  I know people that could very much use some help – or at least help with the things I value – but I wouldn’t help them because I think they are spending what they have on things that aren’t important.  For example, here are some stories from individuals I know personally:

  • Can’t afford insurance but bought a $225 chihuahua puppy,
  • Can’t afford to send their kids to preschool but pays twice the market rate in rent to live in a really nice place,
  • Complains about not having enough money for baby formula but owns a big screen TV,
  • Talks about how they can’t afford a car while holding a Starbucks cup.

(And don’t tell me they deserve all the nice things!  I’m sure they do but when you have to make trade-offs because you don’t have enough money, do you choose a TV or food for your baby?)  I want to give them financial education but who’s to say that my values are better than theirs?

P.S.  I should also note that none of the above people asked me for any money!  So this is all a theoretical debate.

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Why don’t people give more to charities?

June 7th, 2007 in psychology, racism, volunteering

This quote from Richard Stearns, president of World Vision, really hit home for me.

The obstacle is that poverty is often not personal. If your next-door neighbor’s child was dying and you
could save her for $100, you wouldn’t think twice. But a child 10,000 miles
away whom you have never met, that’s just different.
About 29,000 kids die every day of preventable causes–29,000! These kids
have names and faces, hopes and dreams. Their parents love them as much as
we love our kids. We’ve got to make poverty personal.

"It’s not personal" is the reason people don’t give more and it’s probably the reason they are racist or demeaning to minorities as well.  I know that having friends from many walks of life has really helped me understand the world better.

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Is life too easy in the Peace Corps?

April 20th, 2007 in Career, family, Travel, volunteering

My cousin Kelsi is in the Peace Corps and people have been giving her a hard time that she’s got it easy.  She’s really been enjoying the Domican Republic and writing some great stories about the country and the people there.  Having been in third world countries and a lot of Carribean countries, I don’t think it she has it easy.  I’m really glad she’s enjoying the good parts.  In her email today she shared one of the negative sides for the first time:

The first thing I saw when I got to my house in La Cienega was the hugest rat I
had ever seen being chased by the family dog.  I about started freaking out on
the spot, but since it was the family´s first impression of me, I held it
together as much as I could.  They reassure me that there are no rats in the
house, but I have the dog and cat sleep in my room just in case.

It reminded me of a hotel in Honduras where I was sitting at the pool and two rats tried to climb up on my chair.  I pulled up my feet and let my friend continue to sleep in the other lounger.  What else could you do?  I certainly wasn’t going to go anywhere while they were there!  I wish I’d had a dog!

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Atheists, agnostics & charity

December 18th, 2006 in agnostic, atheist, volunteering

I just discovered that "three of the four greatest American philanthropists have been atheists or agnostics" thanks to the New York Times.  They are Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Andrew Carnegie.  John D. Rockefeller is the fourth and he’s the exception.

This struck me for two reasons.  One, I have Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion on my reading list because it has gotten so much publicity.  He argues there is no god and the reason I thought of it just now is because I listened to a radio show where he explains why atheists still contribute to charity.  I can’t off the top of my head recreate his argument for you, but once I’ve read the book, I’ll post again.  (The other reason I have Richard Dawkin’s book on my reading list is because I really like his book The Selfish Gene.  In it he argues that our bodies are just vessels for our genes and that evolution is all about propogating our genes – our intelligence, our humor, our survival rate is all related to how well our individual genes do not our whole being.  Until I read it I’d always thought all of our characteristics had evolved to make our whole being successful.  Thinking about it at the gene level turned everything upside down and inside out.)

The second reason this struck me is that I always have a hard time explaining why I volunteer.  I don’t volunteer because I think I’m supposed to do so for religious reasons.  I don’t volunteer because that’s what I think I’m supposed to for any reason.  I volunteer because I enjoy it.  I enjoy three things about volunteering:

  • learning new things.  I have learned how to train dogs, understand the battered woman’s mindset, build houses (sort of), etc.
  • meeting new people.  Other than work, family and classes, this is one of the main ways I meet people.
  • helping people.  What I can’t explain is why I enjoy helping people.  Why does it make me feel good to make somebody else feel good? 

I believe helping people makes everyone feel good even though a lot of people don’t know it!  I remember leaving a bar late one night with a friend and there was a guy in the parking lot with a car that obviously had problems.  I asked him if he needed a push start and when he did, I made my friend help.  My friend was amazed.  "You are so good!"  I told him at the time that once you’ve owned a car that needs push starting a lot you tend to notice people that need a push start.  But now that I think about it, I don’t think he realized that he felt good because he’d helped.  I can tell you all the times I’ve push started a stranger’s car (a lot!) and each time I felt really good afterwards. (I can also tell you all the times a complete stranger has stopped to help me with something and that made me feel really good too – even when I didn’t think I needed the help.)

But I still can’t tell you why it makes me feel good to help someone who needs it.


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