As the producers of the largest mass of personal wealth in history, Americans show more financial generosity than any other group of people in the world. According to Giving USA 2009, an annual publication by Giving USA Foundation, charitable giving in the United States reached an estimated $307 billion in 2008 even with the U.S. economy mired in recession last year. Yet, Americans gave away more than their money. They also gave away their time through volunteering, the voluntary act of offering or bestowing one’s services for the benefit of those in need. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S Department of Labor, 26.4% of Americans (roughly 62 million people) volunteered at least once between September 2007 and September 2008. Of those who volunteered in that time period, the median number of hours spent on volunteer activities was 52 hours.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics did not publish a dollar value of the more than 3 billion total hours that American volunteers gave away in the time period studied. However, volunteering does have a cost: hours given away by a volunteer could have been used instead to produce a product or service of value for which the volunteer could have been compensated. For example, a high-powered attorney who charges her clients $500 per hour for her legal services could have gained $26,000 for her law firm had she not spent 52 hours volunteering her time to those in need. An economist would call the $26,000 forgone the “opportunity cost” of the attorney volunteering her time. It is a real, legitimate cost that an economist would not ignore.
However, few volunteers in America attempt to assign a dollar value to the hours they give away to those in need. To the volunteer, the mere act of giving to those in need trumps the economist’s “opportunity cost”, regardless of its value. Ah, but therein lies what the economist might reason as selfishness on the part of the volunteer: Is the volunteer truly giving away his time without gain or pleasure, or is the volunteer gaining what an economist would consider “utility”, a measure of personal satisfaction? After all, would a volunteer actually give away his time if he did not expect to receive some sense of satisfaction in exchange? It’s rare to find a volunteer who continues to give away his time in exchange for only misery, resentment, or regret.
Following the economist’s cue, a volunteer is right to behave selfishly in seeking to maximize her “utility” or satisfaction from giving away her time to those in need. Having trouble viewing the act of volunteering as a selfish act? Well, here’s an easy, five-step process to help you maximize your personal satisfaction from volunteering your time to those in need:
- Find your passion – Proactively identify the one or two causes that you feel would give you the most personal satisfaction in your life and then go out and give away your time to the cause as you see fit.
- Assess the real need – Do those in need have a real need, or is it a pseudo need – perhaps a need over-dramatized for the sake of fundraising or for the PR benefit of a celebrity trumpeting her cause du jour? Look at the needs critically and then decide for yourself. You’ll be more satisfied working on the real needs.
- Volunteer on your terms – Don’t volunteer just because of social pressures to do so. Giving should emerge from your passion, not from your desire to conform. Remember, maximizing your “utility” out of your precious time you choose to give away is the goal. Pleasing others in your social circle is not.
- Give anonymously – there is tremendous personal satisfaction to be gained by giving away both your time and money without taking any credit for it. It can be truly liberating. Try it.
- Keep it close – volunteering is about making personal connections with those truly in need, not about impressing or socially outmaneuvering friends or colleagues at cocktail parties. Oftentimes, wearing your passion on your sleeve is less satisfying than simply keeping it close to your heart.
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NOTE: This article first appeared in the volunteering-themed Summer 2009 issue of The Swan, a publication of the Lake Forest Community Association, Inc., a nonprofit Texas corporation.
Copyright 2009 LoganFlatt.com. All rights reserved.
