How to Craft Your Ideal Volunteer Opportunity

Last Updated on October 23, 2024

I’m sure you’ve dreamed about your ideal job. Mused about what your work life would look like if you were in total control. In your dream, are you a leader or a follower? What sort of cool projects do you complete? How many hours a week do you work?

Visualizing your dream job is one step toward making it happen. Or getting as many elements of your dream into your reality.

So why not use the same approach to dream your ideal volunteer opportunity?

Craft Your Ideal Volunteer Opportunity

You have many choices about where to start with your activism, but the right place for you is the one best matched to your passion, skills, knowledge, and motivation. Build that into your dream.

Start With Your Passion, Gifts, and Motivation

In my activism path, I encourage you to focus on your life and how activism allows you to live your values. Check out the resource section at the bottom of this post to learn more.

In the first step, you examine your life to find the passions closest to your heart.

In the second step of the activism path, you inventory the gifts you bring to activism.

• Skills – what do you do well that you can apply to activism?
• Knowledge – you’ve gained a lot of know-how in your life.
• Motivation – What is your strongest motivator? Build that into your visioning.

Characteristics of Activism Work

Describe your ideal activism experience. Include the features of the work, such as how you work with people, what you want to learn, and your preference for level of responsibility.

Mull over this list when you craft your ideal activism opportunity:

• The level of responsibility you prefer
• How often you work with others vs. being alone
• Ways in which you make an impact on your cause
• The tasks you want to perform
• New things you want to learn
• The support and resources you covet

Going Solo versus Joining Up

One way to make an impact on the world is to create your own activism, rather than joining an existing movement. In solo activism, you focus on your unique issue or your unique approach to a current problem.

Perhaps joining up with a current movement fits for you. Getting involved with a group works if you have limited time to devote to your cause. Also, you may want the social aspects of working in a team. Finally, perhaps their efforts light your fire.

Volunteering With an Organization

If you decide to join an existing organization, be clear about what you want. Successful organizations realize the impact of dedicated and talented people; they engage activists at their highest level of skill and for which they feel the most motivation.

Will the organization put you in the right place, one that matches your passions, skills, knowledge, and motivation? Before you talk with them, review this list and be clear about what elements you want as part of your activism.

High-engagement organizations:

• strive to build a relationship with you
• care about how you see yourself as an activist and try to help you achieve your goals
• try to bring you into contact with others, to provide you with a community
• train you
• coach you as you work
• give you control over your work
• engage you in reflection about the work and your part in it

An Example Ideal Volunteer Opportunity

Deborah knows she wants to make a difference on the issue of climate change. A new grandmother, she worries about what the environment will be like when her grandson is an adult. She wants him to be able to enjoy the outdoors, and she doesn’t want him to have to deal with the natural disasters that may become more common if we neglect rising temperatures.

She knows she may not get her ideal activism experience. But she is willing to dream without limiting herself, in hopes of getting as close as possible to the perfect situation.

She starts by inventorying what she brings to activism.

• Skills – She is a retired nurse, so she is an excellent multitasker and works well with all types of people.
• Knowledge – She has medical skills, of course. And because her mother was a gardener, she creates landscapes and food gardens on her land.
• Motivation – Deborah feels in the zone, happy and motivated when she loves the work she is doing.

Dreaming Big

Next, she imagines herself as a volunteer:

• At this stage in her life, she is content being a worker bee.
• She feels comfortable working with others or alone, but she’d prefer to work in a team.
• In her dream opportunity, Deborah wants to see that she is having an impact.
• When she familiarizes herself with a list of activism methods, she likes those that are supportive of the work of others. She believes this is the caregiver aspect of her personality.
• Deborah volunteers as a school nurse twice a week, so her preference for activism work is to work half-days on the other days of the week.
• As part of her work, she wants to learn more about climate change and its impact in her community.
• A self-starter, she does not need much supervision once she learns a job. But she’d like a coach, who she can go to with questions and support.

The Result

Deborah’s work to create an ideal volunteer opportunity pays off.

She gets involved with a group of people in her community who are focused on local environmental health. They created a green infrastructure plan for the county and are focused on implementing best practices.

Deborah realizes that many of the suggestions for individual property owners are related to gardening. For example, planting trees, providing proper water runoff, using organic fertilizers, and creating inviting spaces for butterflies and bees.

This area of the plan motivates her because green spaces impact people’s physical and mental health, through exercise, stress reduction, and better air and water quality.

Ultimately, Deborah spends several days a week helping people in her county create a green landscape. She also provides tours to ecologically sound properties in her county to show that making a few changes can help the environment and our health.

Because she knows what she wants, she was able to find the right organization that provides many elements of her dream. It isn’t perfect, of course, but she has the features most important to her. And the best part of this visioning process is knowing that she is making an impact for her grandson.

Your Ideal Volunteer Experience

Dream big! This is your ideal volunteer experience. Imagine yourself out there making change and how you’d like to do it. And try to come as close as possible to that dream.

Resources

The activism path includes these steps:

• What is your vision?
• What are your gifts?
• What’s in it for you?
• How can you match your gifts to the needs of the community?
• Are you making an impact?

The 5-Step Activism Path Workbook contains surveys, checklists, and reflections designed to help you envision your ideal volunteer opportunity.