Are you a bad volunteer? | Angela Blake | TEDxArlington Heights

Key Concepts

• Intention-Centered Volunteering: Volunteering driven by the volunteer's desire to "do good" or "make a difference," often prioritizing their own vision of impact over the organization's actual needs.
• Mission-Centered Volunteering: Volunteering that prioritizes the needs of the community and the organization's mission, aligning the volunteer's efforts with what is truly required.
• Ego Audit: A self-reflective process designed to identify and mitigate the negative impact of volunteer egotism, shifting focus from the volunteer's experience to the mission's needs.
• The Expert Volunteer: A volunteer who believes their professional expertise automatically qualifies them to dictate how volunteer tasks should be done, often disregarding organizational procedures.
• The Party Crasher Volunteer: A volunteer who brings untrained friends to a shift, causing disruption and requiring significant staff time for impromptu training.
• The Vet Volunteer: A long-term volunteer resistant to change, who may refuse to learn new procedures or actively undermine new staff and volunteers by promoting outdated methods.
• The Bleeding Heart Volunteer: A volunteer whose deep empathy leads them to bend or break rules, make exceptions, and overextend themselves, blurring boundaries and creating difficult situations for staff and clients.

The Problem with "Good Intentions" in Volunteering

The speaker draws an analogy between receiving a bad gift and the experience of volunteering. Just as people often feign gratitude for a poorly chosen gift, volunteers are rarely told when their contributions are unhelpful or even detrimental. This lack of honest feedback stems from a societal reluctance to criticize someone's "gift" of time and effort, which can be uncomfortable as it involves the volunteer's ego. The prevailing narrative in volunteering discussions centers on the volunteer's experience and positive feelings, rather than the actual impact on those being served. This creates a situation where "bad volunteers" may not realize their negative impact, continuing to "knit more scarves" (metaphorically) without understanding if their efforts are truly beneficial.

The Ego Audit: Shifting from Intention to Mission

To address this issue, the speaker proposes an "ego audit," a method to identify and correct unhelpful volunteering behaviors. This audit aims to shift the focus from "intention-centered volunteering" to "mission-centered volunteering."

• Intention-Centered Volunteering: Characterized by statements like "I am here to help" or "I want to make a difference." This approach prioritizes the volunteer's preconceived notions of impact, potentially making the organization's mission and the community's needs secondary.
• Mission-Centered Volunteering: Prioritizes the actual needs of the community and aligns all efforts towards meeting those needs.

An audit, defined as a methodical examination and review, helps volunteers understand how they are showing up.

Task 1: Asking Questions

The first task of the ego audit involves asking questions to ensure actions are helpful and aligned with needs.

• Intention-Centered Example: A volunteer holds a food drive, believing they are helping the "needy" by donating canned goods.
• Mission-Centered Approach: The volunteer asks, "What is needed?" They discover the food bank has an abundance of canned goods but a critical shortage of volunteers to distribute them. This simple question redirects effort from potentially wasted energy to addressing a genuine need.

The core shift is from "I am here to help" to "Is this helpful?" and from "I am making an impact" to "What impact was made?" This process helps volunteers become "the answer" by understanding what is truly required.

Task 2: Getting Out of the Way of the Work

The second task involves recognizing and mitigating the disruptive impact of certain volunteer archetypes. The speaker identifies four types of volunteers who can interfere with mission-centered work:

1. The Expert:

   • Description: Believes their professional skills make them an expert volunteer, often disregarding organizational procedures and training. They may try to lead, do tasks alone, and cause confusion.
   • Impact: Staff feel disrespected, other volunteers are discouraged, and guests feel disregarded.
   • Underlying Trait: Expertise.

2. The Party Crasher:

   • Description: Brings untrained friends to volunteer shifts without prior arrangement, causing unexpected disruption. They are often unfamiliar with operations and the mission.
   • Impact: Overwhelms volunteer coordinators, hinders staff productivity, and creates an unsettling atmosphere for clients. The effort expended often yields minimal results.
   • Underlying Trait: Energy.

3. The Vet:

   • Description: A long-term volunteer resistant to change, believing "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." They may refuse retraining or actively undermine new procedures and staff.
   • Impact: Discourages new staff by reminiscing about "how things used to be" and undermines new volunteers' training. Staff spend significant time correcting their work.
   • Underlying Trait: Experience.

4. The Bleeding Heart:

   • Description: Driven by deep empathy, they make exceptions to rules, blur boundaries, and try to serve everyone, often to the point of burnout.
   • Impact: Leads to misunderstandings, hurt feelings, resentment, and accusations of favoritism when boundaries are later enforced. Staff must manage the aftermath.
   • Underlying Trait: Empathy.

The speaker notes that while these traits can be valuable, they become problematic when the volunteer's behavior becomes the focus, forcing staff to "dig those qualities out" of the disruption. The speaker humorously admits to being a "party crashing, bleeding heart" combo, which can be "more than work."

Applying Professionalism to Volunteering

The ego audit encourages volunteers to approach their roles with the same professionalism expected in a paid job. Showing up unprepared, ignoring policies, or inviting friends to "help" at work would have clear negative consequences. The "egotism of volunteering" leads people to believe they can show up however they wish because the work is unpaid, yet still expect praise.

Conclusion and Call to Action

The core message is that "how you show up matters" and is more critical than the specific task performed. Both donating food and washing pans are necessary for feeding someone and serve the mission. The ego audit is a tool for ensuring one is doing "good mission-centered work." It should be used repeatedly by volunteers of all experience levels. By asking questions and getting out of the way of the work, volunteers can achieve "real work." Re-calibrating to stay mission-centered reveals that the work itself is the gift, and it is good. The final call is to simply "show up and serve."