What Motivates you to Volunteer? Assess with these 6 Steps!

What motivates you to volunteer? Why should you assess your motivations? As professional managers, we (Burgher and Snyder, Volunteering) engage in the execution of projects, processes, and tasks in many types of organizations. Thus, we know from experience how understanding your motivations for taking action will keep you, your team, and your organization healthy and moving forward.

Assessing your motivations helps you focus on what really matters and increases your efficiency, happiness, and success on the job. Clary et al. (1998) have outlined six general areas of volunteer motivation in their influential paper “Understanding and assessing the motivations of volunteers: A functional approach” (Journal of Personality & Social Psychology). These motivational drivers will get you started in analyzing your own, your peers’, and your staff’s motivation to be “on the job”.

We list, and then outline Clary’s 6 “functions” below. We have added some suggestions for applying these principles immediately to all of your volunteering affairs. Be proactive – assess yourself and proactively manage those you are responsible for.

1. Values – Choose an organization that shares your values. Study your values. You need to know your ethics before you need your ethics. Examine who you are and take stock of your moral, ethical, spiritual, and basic human characteristics. If you are not a good fit, everyone will be miserable and you will quit. Managers, watch for this in your people.

2. Understanding – Find an organization that can use your skills or teach you what skills you want to learn. Share your abilities and learn new abilities. Young people, find a place that will teach you something. Managers, make sure each of your volunteers has ample opportunity to grow and learn.

3. Social – Find people you want to be around.  Do not choose an organization or perform an activity because of peer pressure. This will only make you miserable and waste resources. Managers, constantly develop your team play. This needs to happen on a daily basis, not with once-a-year chats or semiannual, even quarterly chats or retreats.

4. Career – For those of you that are “work inexperienced,” consider picking an organization that can land you a job or enhance your career. If you are retired, do what you want to do, not necessarily what you are good at (your previous career). Volunteering needs to be enjoyable and constructive. Managers, put round pegs in round holes—do not try to turn a duck into a platypus.

5. Protective – It appears, according to studies that some folks volunteer to reduce the guilt associated with success, to eliminate feelings of inadequacy or insecurity, or to escape. These are all very bad ideas. Turn the protective motivator into learning, healing, and giving because it makes you feel good. Do not volunteer because being successful makes you feel guilty. Lose the guilt; you will be a better volunteer without it. Provide service with your skills or resources. This goes for you, too, managers.

6. Enhancement – Clary et al. attribute this motivator to a need to “obtain satisfactions related to personal growth and self-esteem.” Let us call this “purpose.” We all want to have purpose, we need to be able to define ourselves in a positive manner, and feel like we are helping someone, somewhere, including ourselves. We should choose an organization and/or activity that help us feel like we are making a contribution. Managers, make sure all of your volunteers know that they are appreciated and are undertaking tasks with purpose.

We suggest you examine these 6 functions briefly, assess, and keep your objectives simple. Know why you are doing what you are doing. Find your way, shifting your focus if you need to. You will learn as you engage. Remember that Volunteering helps others, and also helps you. As we mentioned in our last post, volunteering reduces anxiety, staves off loneliness, enhances your health, provides for intergenerational growth, and sharpens our knowledge of or organizations and business. Volunteering is good for all.

And, managers, you must pay attention to things big and small—keeping folks moving forward positively completes work, adds value, and is sustainable. So again, go out and volunteer and make the world a better place.