What's In It For Me?

If you ask your friends who serve on the boards of not-for-profit organizations to tell you why they agreed to serve, chances are you'll get one or more of these answers:
1. A friend asked me to serve and I couldn't say no.
2. I believe in the cause and am pleased to have an opportunity to support it.
3. Life has been good to me and this is a way I can give something back.
If your friend is being really honest with you, he or she may add one or more of these additional answers:
1. A prestigious group of people serve on this board, and I'm glad to be able to hob-nob with them.
2. I expect to make important contacts with people that may become customers or clients.
3. I will be able to showcase my professional abilities and thus attract clients.

Now, here's a question for you to ponder: which of these reasons are legitimate, and which are not?

Before I give you my answer to that question, let me tell you what originally got me thinking about this subject. As a new board member of a worthwhile local organization, I listened to a guest speaker from our national headquarters telling us what was expected of us as board members. When he finished and opened the floor for questions, I asked, "Now that you've told us what the organization expects of us, what can we expect in return?" I think everyone was a little shocked that I had the effrontery to ask such a question, and, in fact, the speaker turned to me and said, "I've never been asked that question before." Nor did he have any off-the-top of his head answers, so I sat down and developed my own list of what I wanted in return for my voluntarism. In a future forum entry, I'll share some of my expectations, but for now, let me say that I think all of the reasons I mentioned above are perfectly valid.

One of the things I've found in half a century of volunteering is never to scorn the inferior motivation. If Joe works his keester off looking for a personal pay-off, in the meantime the organization gets a pay-ff from his efforts. And one of three things will happen to Joe: He will get his personal pay-off and therefore redouble his efforts for the cause; he will not get the pay-off he was looking for, but will get other satisfactions that will cause him to stick around and redouble his efforts for the cause; or he will not get any pay-off and he'll leave.

The people who are part of this Other Side of Fifty community include many, I'm sure, who have spent more than their share of time being volunteers -- and many others who are approaching a time of life when they have leisure that they haven't had before and may be looking for good things to do to keep busy with.

I'm here to tell you that doing good is a good thing to do, and if you do well by doing good, so much the better!