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In an era when many bosses treat employment as a 24/7 commitment, workers can find it difficult to set aside time for volunteering. But with the right approach to your employer and true passion for your volunteer work, it's usually possible to reconcile the demands of paid and unpaid work.
Your Employer's Support Matters
A good starting point in your quest to strike a work/volunteering balance is your employer's human resources department or community relations office. You need to know how your company could help (or hinder) your volunteer work.
Employer attitudes run the gamut, says Amanda Missey, director of business volunteer services for the Volunteer Center of Bergen County in Hackensack, New Jersey. "There are employers who have no interest in community involvement and won't even allow tutoring at lunch," she says. "But many other companies have wonderful community relations programs."
What do these programs do? Some give workers paid time off to volunteer, whether to spend an hour per week tutoring a teen or to take a day each year to help build affordable housing.
Sometimes employers actively coordinate their employees' volunteer work by partnering with a nonprofit. Some such programs are much less visible than others, so it pays to ask.
Even companies that don't lend much official support to volunteering may be willing to quietly accommodate some of their worker-volunteers' logistical needs. For example, it may be a big help to your volunteer organization if your manager permits you to occasionally communicate with the group by phone or email while at the office.
Your Time Commitment
Once you've scoped out your employer's policies and attitudes, you're ready to search for an organization whose need for volunteer labor is compatible with your work situation. Umbrella volunteer organizations can help you get started.
"There are so many people out there who really do want to volunteer and give back to their communities," says Jayme Forstrom, president of the Minnesota Association of Past Community Ambassadors (MAPCA). "But they are afraid of the time commitment, so MAPCA gives them opportunities to work on special events or with organizations on a short-term basis." With some volunteer groups, a small initial time commitment can gradually be ramped up.
Nana Brew-Hammond's solution has been to take on a volunteer situation that presents major demands but falls outside her working hours. Brew-Hammond, a publicist for Sony Pictures Classics in New York City, recently began volunteering to help girls improve their writing. At Girls Write Now, "we have workshops where we all get together to do journals or writing exercises," she says. "On a week-to-week basis, we're in contact with mentees by phone or on excursions. It's not much to take a day a week to hang out with my mentee." This generally happens on weekends.
For the truly time-crunched, virtual volunteering can be a great solution. Virtual volunteers usually can put in their hours in small increments at their convenience using a home or work computer rather than physically going out into the community. Projects range from document translation to political action.
Meaningful Volunteering Shouldn't Drain You
How do busy people cope when a major work deadline coincides with a peak in volunteer activity? By using their passion for a good cause to energize them and carry them through.
Forstrom, who works for an insurance broker during the day, says that although leading a volunteer organization does take up much of her own work breaks, evenings and weekends, she doesn't mind. "I believe that if your heart is in your volunteering, it doesn't have to seem like work, and it isn't too hard to balance," she says.