Welcome back!
Here is the much anticipated Part Two of Volunteering Without Losing Your Sanity by guest blogger Erin of ThingsMomsLike.com:
“I didn’t volunteer much for the next few years, with the exception of a shift here or there are the school Book Fair or something like that. The school didn’t want me bringing my baby/toddler to school and I can’t say that I blamed them.
When my son was four, he went to a Montessori preschool here in this small town that we moved to. I felt free for three-and-a-half hours a day. Want to know what I did with that freedom? I volunteered myself as the Vice President of my daughter’s school. No one forced me to volunteer. I raised my hand. I said I’d do it. When I got home from that PTA meeting, my husband groaned because he knew that there was nothing he could do but sit back and watch as I overcommitted yet again.
The following year, I became the President of the entire K-8 school. Someone asked me if I would do it and I said yes. It was that simple. What I didn’t know is that there are people who do not take their commitment to volunteer as seriously as I do. I am not talking about going above and beyond, I am talking about doing the basics of the position that they signed up for. My biggest pitfall during that time was that if someone else wasn’t doing ‘their job’, instead of confronting it head on or trying to find someone else to do it, I did it myself.
Now, I DO plan to write in more detail about my various experiences on PTA because some of it was scripted RIGHT OUT of Harper Valley P.T.A., but the purpose of this article is to discuss the pitfalls of over-committing and how to volunteer without losing your sanity and time for your family.
Some lessons I learned the hard way are:
No one is going to try to stop you from doing too much except your significant other. It’s up to you to decide with whoever has to share you with the volunteer work how much you can realistically do without neglecting your other responsibilities.
It will not make you feel good to take a position that you’re just not going to be good at. If you don’t like to deal with money, please don’t volunteer to be the treasurer of anything or even a fundraiser. I’ve seen lots of people just disappear and avoid me like the plague because they signed up for something they don’t want to do or they find was NOT a good fit.
On the heels of the last statement, if you do find that you are ill-suited to a position that you agreed to volunteer in, it’s the right thing to do for everyone involved to let someone know right away. Avoiding and just not doing the work will make you look a lot worse than letting someone know that they need to find a replacement.
I know that this saying is borrowed from somewhere and that ‘where’ escapes me now, but saying YES to one thing is often saying NO to something else. That something else might be your spouse, children, family, hobby that makes you feel good, etc.
Your friends will still like you if you say no. Strangers will also probably still like you if they liked you before.
You may not necessarily find the group you’re wanting to volunteer with become your closest friends or even your friends at all. Don’t rely on volunteer work to make friends
‘Working a shift’ or a short-term event like a book fair, festival, booth at a resource fair are often great ways to offer your time without committing to something that will last forever–or what can feel like forever.
If you have the time and motivation to volunteer, find something that you really love to do and that means something to you. You are less likely to get burned out if you love what you do.
If you tend to say ‘yes’ when you really should be saying ‘no’, think about why that is. Do you want people to like you more? Do you feel like volunteer work makes you important?”
Join the conversation and share your favorite tips for keeping your sanity while volunteering! I’d love to hear from you.
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