That morning was filled with the chaos of emails and phone messages and the flitting of staff whose requests and questions settled onto my desk. As I scrolled through the emails and deleted the spammy junk, I then moved onto the “cute” emails from volunteers. I love that they feel close enough to send me their chain emails, even though the sheer volume is cumbersome. I came across a video from a volunteer about the random giving of 1000 origami cranes to strangers. Lovely music accompanied the surprised looks on the faces of strangers as a young woman shared her kindness with humanity. I’ve gotten plenty of videos before, random acts of kindness shared by the network of people in our volunteers’ lives.
As I closed the email, I looked up to see Stuart standing in front of me. Stuart is a volunteer who seldom requires any attention or help. As a matter of fact, I actually feel rather inadequate in his presence. A former Army officer and professor, Stuart has ridden the wings of power in circles I can only imagine. A tragedy brought Stuart to volunteer. His own personal grief, shared only in carefully guarded pieces has made him one powerful volunteer. Sometimes there is an incredible fusion in volunteers, almost like a big bang theory of worlds colliding that can produce an amazing giver. Stuart is one of those people.
“Hi Stuart,” I said, “what brings you here today?”
His face was intense, purposeful. “They called me in to sit with a patient.”
“Oh, of course.” In a millisecond, I switched gears. See, volunteer managers can change personas at will. It’s a skill that serves us well as we morph into the role we need to assume.
“Let’s go find out where they want you to be,” I said, getting up and heading for the nurses’ station. Stuart is an 11th hour, or vigil or whatever you want to term it volunteer. These are volunteers who sit with the dying who are alone at the end of the journey. These folks are incredible, and they take their jobs to heart with the fierceness of a soldier battling the forces that are trying to keep the dying alone.
Stuart was led to a room where a man was actively dying. He was alone, because his family was in route and Stuart would be the human presence until they arrived. The man was young, dying of melanoma and he had taken a turn for the worse during the night. His parents were on their way.
So, Stuart entered the room, inhaling the scene. He pulled a chair up close and sat down, his eyes riveted to the human spirit struggling to escape the failing body. Stuart took in the whispered instructions from the nurse then looked up a me and nodded once. “Go, I’ve got this, I’m on duty.”
As I walked back towards my office, I had to stop, so I paused at the water fountain. Such intense moments cannot be shrugged off so easily. I needed to feel the weight of a life ebbing away, to process the intensity of a volunteer giving of himself completely.
I returned to tasks, somewhat distracted, still feeling the energy of what was happening a short way from my workspace. I thought back to the class Stuart had taken on the imminently dying, and how, looking over the faces of the volunteers in attendance, I was struck by the sheer power of their will. Each one had their own story, their own reason to give so intimately and the humility of it all had been overwhelming.
These feelings lingered and I kept glancing at the door to see if Stuart would check in before he left. If he didn’t, well, I understood the why of that decision only too well.
A short time later, when thankfully, no one was waiting to chat, Stuart did come in. “Please don’t let there be any interruptions,” I said under my breath. He looked drained.
“They arrived,” he said, speaking of the parents. “They are with him now and he’s close.” Stuart’s face was lined with the responsibility of holding a soul in his hand.
“And you?” I whispered.
He smiled. “I’m good. I’m glad I could be here.” The myriad of inner emotions stayed inside where he prefered them to remain.
“Thank you Stuart.” I said, knowing that any other statements or questions would be lame, flat.
“Call me anytime.” He stood up, and shook my hand. “Anytime.” With that he turned and walked out.
There will be no You Tube video of Stuart. He has no message to share with the voyeurism masses. His is an intensely private journey.
Later, I checked with the nurse, and the patient’s parents were with him when he died. In their mix of hard emotions, the parents might not even realize that Stuart was there, not yet anyway. Would it matter to Stuart if they never did know that he spent that time between life and death with someone he did not know, yet cared about so deeply? Or would his reward just be the knowledge that he had spent the most intimate of moments with another?
I started the morning looking at a woman giving cranes to strangers, and ended the morning witnessing a soldier wield his proverbial sword to keep a stranger from dying alone.
Volunteering is of swords and cranes and sometimes, they mean the same thing.
-Meridian
Tag: volunteering good for you
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Of Swords and Cranes
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An Open Letter to Prospective Volunteers During Volunteer Appreciation Week
Dear Potential Volunteer:
Happy volunteer appreciation week. Although, you may not yet be a volunteer, by considering becoming one, you are one step closer to being one of over 100 million volunteers worldwide. We, volunteer managers, are cordially inviting you. And so, I am writing this letter to you personally. If you are interested, I’m going to ask you a few questions to help you acquaint yourself with the volunteer manager who will be your guide throughout this process. Let’s get started.
Because we appreciate your unique qualities, how do we support you while together we find your ideal volunteer niche? Are we to be your mentor, your cheerleader, your coach, or your teacher? Can you help us fill the role you need us to fill so that you can succeed?
What should we do to help bring out your best? Do we hover, give constant praise or would you rather we stay back and be available only when you signal you need our help? Can you give us signals that indicate you are doing well or tap us on the shoulder when you need us?
How often do you want us to call you? Every time we have an assignment? Are you ok with saying no to us or do you feel like you have to say yes? How will we know its the right time in your day or week or life? Can you tell us when things change so that we do not have to guess? (We usually are incorrect, just so you know).
Ok, if you’re still with me, let’s move on.
How much do you want us to know about you personally? Do you want us to know every deep detail or do you feel that lots of personal questions are, well, too personal? Can you help us get to know you as a person?
Will you understand why we ask you to respect our guidelines? Our rules are there for reasons. Sometimes, to be honest, the rules frustrate us too. If we ask you for a background check, can you be ok with us having to do that? We want you to know that we don’t think you are a criminal, we are just following requirements. It’s not that we don’t want you to volunteer and appreciate your enthusiasm, it’s that we must maintain processes in order to serve you and our clients. Can you think of it like this: If my mother (or father, son, partner, whomever) needed the help of a volunteer, would I want that volunteer to be thoroughly vetted by the organization?
What about awards and recognition? Would you feel left out if another volunteer was spotlighted or given an award? Are you the kind of person who says the limelight doesn’t matter, but secretly you feel slighted if we take you at your word and don’t formally honor you? This may seem trivial, but we really want to give you the type of feedback that fits your style. Meaningless praise is not what we are about. Can you help us to give you the recognition you’ve earned?
And what about motivations? Will you feel that we are psychoanalyzing if we try to get at the heart of your desire to volunteer? Will it bother you if we want to probe deeper than your desire to “just help?” Can you see how it helps us when we know the secondary reasons like you enjoy socializing or you need challenging experiences? Can we convince you that we are really doing our job if we gently probe about your recent losses or your former life challenges? Will you understand if we take more time acclimatizing you because we want to make sure that you will do well? If we ask you to wait six months or a year, can you see that we want you to come back after you have spent some time healing yourself? We know that volunteering is cathartic and healing and we have seen so many people successfully volunteer while mending their souls. Since this is a very delicate balance, will you understand we have a responsibility to the vulnerable population we serve and that being healthy and whole is a sound basis for volunteering? Will you let us work with you?
When you have a great idea, can you understand that we do not make policy and that we cannot always make things happen, at least not right away? Because organizations have hierarchies, will you allow us to go through the channels to get things done and understand that we can’t force processes to go faster? We get very frustrated too, with the sometimes slow go of committees and permissions. But having said that, volunteers all over the world have made tremendous improvements in their respective organizations. We most certainly do value your ideas and suggestions, so will you keep them coming? Your suggestions make us look good too. Just kidding.
We want you to know that we want you to succeed. Our jobs are to find you, (although oftentimes you find us) to orient you properly, to give you the attention and mentoring you need, to place you in a meaningful position that enhances your life while respecting your availability, and to do everything in our power to keep you coming back as a satisfied, productive volunteer.
You are the reason we have jobs, jobs we cherish, jobs we believe in. You inspire us, challenge us, educate us, lead us and keep us coming back. We look at each one of you as an individual, with unique perspectives, needs, goals and timetables. We want to support you while cultivating your skills and we are willing to invest time in you if you are willing to work with us. Our clients benefit beyond any of our imaginations.
Here’s to you, our future volunteers. Will you come, be part of our world? Will you seek us out and change our clients’ and your lives for the better? We want you to experience that almost inexplicable feeling of helping another human being. As one existing volunteer mused, “how can I describe what it is like, my volunteering with critically ill people? How can I describe the feeling I get? Its sorta like trying to tell someone who’s never been in love what it’s like to be in love.”
Come, our new friends, fall in love.
-Meridian -
First, Do No Harm
A prospective volunteer, Judy came to one of my orientations last month. She eagerly embraced the topics, participated in class and repeatedly told me how much she “owed” us for caring for her husband. She is passionate, ready to work and a strong woman. She and her husband owned a business that she now shares with her children. She has artistic abilities, is educated, well spoken and incredibly smart. She is that volunteer we dream about when we’re not having a nightmare that all the unfinished work has fused together into a giant smiling clown with a pillow and is suffocating us in our sleep. (You do have that dream, too, don’t you?)
I spent a good two hours with her one on one in a private interview a week after classes ended. We talked about her abilities and talents, her ideas and plans to help and all the folks in her business circle she knows that she can enlist to help too. So, what could possibly be wrong with this perfect volunteer?
Did you guess she’s moving? Nope. Did you guess she’s really crazy? Nope again.
Although we spent time talking about all those wonderful things, we spent 90% of the time talking about her husband’s illness and death. He died four years ago and to our credit, we took wonderful care of him. Judy passionately talked about losing a husband so early in life, the shock, the quickness of the rare disease, the legal issues surrounding a business and a lone position in life with friends encouraging “getting back in the dating game.” She had already started a support group on Facebook, has reached out to the community for research funds and would love to be able to help other young widows. Her ideas are lofty, her desire to help of the highest noble thoughts. Her energy is infectious and I wanted to reach into my drawer and pull out my checkbook.
Our conversation reminded me of John Walsh, the host of the TV show, “America’s Most Wanted.” Mr. Walsh began his crusade after his son, Adam was brutally murdered. It’s what experts call instrumental grieving, the throwing of oneself into a cause. It’s truly amazing to watch someone do that, to see their resolve, to feel their calling. These people are remarkable. They turn despair and tragedy into benefits for the rest of us. I know if my husband were to fall ill to that disease that took Judy’s husband, I would want her coaching me.
But, I cannot, in good conscience, put Judy with patients, family members or the bereaved. It matters not that she really, really, really wants to help. It matters not that she is full of passion and energy. But it does matter that in the three times we’ve talked, everything always comes back to her experience.
I’ve witnessed raw, unrelenting grief before. I’ve seen potential volunteers so fired up that they speak in a machine gun volley that shoots down every thought that does not apply to their situation. I’ve watched eager people grasp onto volunteering like a life-preserver in a sea of molten pain. I feel for them, because, just like every other volunteer, I get to know them and to know these volunteers is to know heartache. I so want to help them work through their grief, but my first loyalty is to the clients at hand. And they need volunteers who are sound, mostly healed, or at least healed enough to put aside their own lives.
And so, as the conversation wound down, Judy looked at me and breathlessly asked, “do you think I can do this?”
“Not yet,” I answered truthfully. See, I’ve learned over the course of so many years that it’s much kinder to be honest. Then I added, “I’m thinking that you will be wonderful with our patients and families one day and we are incredibly fortunate to have you. Right now, I hear some hurt and we don’t want this work to add to your hurt. You’ve been through so much.”
“I know. It still hurts and I trust your judgement.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I just need to help.” I could see the dam about to break but she quickly stuck another emotional patch on the crack that threatened to burst.
What a burden to trust me, I thought selfishly. I’m fallible, running on instinct and gut. I want to be wrong about you, to just let you come in and get whole again.
Here’s where volunteer management is on a whole other level from standard HR. Just like HR, we have jobs to fill and we head hunt for the best people for the job. But we don’t reject people. We don’t pick and choose. We try to find a place for everyone, and it takes hard work to find places for everyone. I will find a place for Judy. We will start small and away from the clients. I want to see her succeed as a volunteer and to mend her deep wounds. It will take time, observation, mentoring and caution. That’s what I signed up to do.
But first, I will do no harm, not to Judy and not to our clients.
-Meridian -
Ah Ha!
Carly is a new activities director at a large nursing home. Her duties also include managing their 20 occasional volunteers. When Carly was hired she received a good amount of training in providing activities. Her training in volunteer management consisted of being handed a list of names and numbers. She recently recounted something she discovered about volunteers over the holidays.
“We’ve always had people asking to come in when the holidays are near I’m told. They want to volunteer to play music or sing or do something associated with Christmas. It’s the only time they will be with me, but I really don’t mind. All the extra help is appreciated and given the fact that I have to coordinate activities as well as volunteers, I have to admit, it is a win-win for me. I pretty much stay with them while they sing or play, so I don’t have to worry about lengthy background checks for a one time volunteer appearance.
This past Christmas, I had two ladies who wanted to volunteer and play music for our residents. The first lady, Jewel, played the violin. She called me up one day and told me that she was driving by our nursing home and she wanted to meet me and play the violin for me. She sounded like it was urgent. I happened to have a few minutes free, so I agreed. She came in and told me she was basically still learning the violin but she had been practicing for some time and she played a few songs. It sounded quite nice, so I gave her a time to come back to play the following week. She called me two times before that to explain that her father had died in a nursing home in another state and that this was a tribute to him. She said that she was nervous playing so I politely listened and encouraged her to keep practicing. I felt like I was helping her too.
The other lady, Melanie, was just visiting relatives for a month or so. She came in and said that she could play the piano fairly well. As it turned out, she is a music teacher with years of experience and skills. She asked me if she would be of help by playing and I told her of course. I set up a time for Melanie to come in and I think it was the day after Jewel was to be here.
Jewel showed up and I took her down to the meeting room where we had a tree and decorations. I provided hot chocolate and the residents were sitting in their wheelchairs, some with family, some alone. We had cookies and several staff were on hand to help. Jewel brought out her violin and proceeded to tell us about how she began learning, how her father always loved the violin and how she had joined a group that was encouraging her to share her gifts with others. After several minutes, she began to play. I can’t remember what song it was, but she kept starting over. The residents and family members were getting restless and as Jewel started over again, a few residents motioned to our staff to take them out. Jewel did not seem to notice, but slowly, the room emptied. She was fairly oblivious to the audience, but continued to play as best as she could while they filtered out. I finally thanked her and she was giddy with pleasure at having played in front of so many people. I told her I would call her again later in the week.
Meanwhile, the next day, Melanie arrived and entered the same set up. I think the residents and family were pretty disappointed, because not as many were present. Melanie opened the piano and greeted the audience. She thanked them for allowing her to play for them and asked them if there was anything they wanted to hear. She proceeded to play all the carols and songs they enjoyed. Everyone was singing along and crying and laughing and Melanie kept referring back to them to make sure they were hearing what they wanted to hear. Little by little the room filled up again and everyone clapped long and hard. Melanie thanked us profusely for allowing her the privilege of entertaining us.
As we were exiting the room, Jewel showed up with her violin. I thought I would play again for a bit, she told me. I thanked Melanie and asked Jewel to accompany me to my office. I told Melanie I would love for her to come back if she was up for it and she agreed. I walked back to my office and closed the door and asked Jewel to sit down. I then told her that we already had someone lined up for today and that she could not just show up and expect to play. She seemed very upset with me. She again talked about her father and her practice and frankly, I’d had enough of her. I excused myself and told her I would be in touch. As she left, I was so shocked at the two different attitudes of these ladies. For one, it was all about her. For the other, it was all about the residents. I’ve not spoken to Jewel since but believe me I call Melanie often and she says she will come in every week until she leaves. If only Jewel were the one leaving and not Melanie, but sometimes, that’s just luck. I was just so shocked at how different the experiences were with these ladies. And it’s not like their talent made the difference, it was… well, it was their perception of their reason to volunteer that made the difference. Who would have known? From this experience, I think I will be just a bit more selective in the future.”
Ah Ha!
-Meridian -
Volunteering: Well-being Gained or Brought?
Jess is a petite brunette who brings a tranquil aura to her volunteering. She is positive, sensitive and gracious. That is, until a few weeks ago. I noticed something slightly askew when she complained about not having enough forms to fill out. She seemed irritated and preoccupied. I caught her a week later staring vacantly into space, and when spoken to, uninterested in the conversation. I had to ask her what was wrong and she reluctantly confided that her son just entered drug rehab. Ahhh, of course. Personal problems push aside tranquility like a schoolyard bully with the new kid.
Jess just wasn’t here, not 100%, and I suspect not even 50%. So, how does volunteering fit in with Jess’ definition of well-being?
As I pondered Jess’ circumstance and wondered if her volunteering gave her some sort of welcome distraction or if it just crowded her thoughts, I started thinking about how we “sell” volunteering by talking about how good it is for the participants. This caused me to reflect on the thousands of conversations with volunteers about their personal circumstances. It occurred to me that the vast majority of volunteers came with well-being already intact. We didn’t create well-being for them. We may have enhanced it, we may have filled a void, added a dimension, helped with grief, paved a way, helped fill time, boosted self-esteem, and maybe even helped mend a heart.But in all those cases, we added, not created. This was a sobering thought for me. I’ve had volunteers who were forced to come, whether by a parent, spouse, school, court or a friend. The door for them is often shut. I think I’m kidding myself if I believe that I can make them a volunteer in spite of their resistance. They have to give just a little.
I remember Jana, a crushed human being. She came out of real desperation. She took over a year to start actually volunteering. Her beginning was spent healing. She made it with real determination. But the point is, she made it because she always wanted to make it and was willing to open up and find how she could. This becomes a tightrope walk for volunteer managers. How do you encourage someone to volunteer without letting them “experiment” on clients? It takes a great deal of patience and time and effort. It can be exhausting, especially since you have so many other volunteers to mentor. I think volunteer managers take personal pride in helping someone through volunteering. But I think, too, we don’t kid ourselves into thinking that volunteering will “fix” anyone.
I think of Antoinette, whose grown son had died 12 years before. She had hoped that by volunteering, she would find a way to fill the hole in her heart. She volunteered for 3 years, and it never happened. She spent the vast majority of her volunteer time talking to me about how her son’s wife was a negligent mother. She hurt, and no amount of volunteering helped. As a matter of fact, very early on in her volunteering, I once found a family member comforting Antoinette. After that, I kept her away from clients. Antoinette’s volunteering was exhausting. Other volunteers asked me why I put up with it. Honestly, I don’t know, but I suspect that somehow, I thought volunteering had this magical quality to it. I’m not so sure anymore.
I’ve had people tell me that volunteering has changed their life. What I think now, is that volunteering opened the door for a part of them that was always there. And if that’s the best we can do, then I’m pretty proud of that. Because it also means that we don’t have to continue to blame ourselves if volunteering doesn’t work for everyone. It’s not a salve or an elixir or a magic pill. It is an act of putting oneself aside to help someone else in their time of need. It takes a certain amount, even if it is miniscule, of well-being to volunteer. We, volunteer managers, can usually find that well-being fiber that allows someone to give selflessly. We love to cultivate it and make it grow.
But we don’t have drawers full of magic pills to hand out. Our drawers are full of the stuff that helps us do our job, like listening skills, discernment, patience and good, sound judgement.
And so, I now think that I’ve always been looking for volunteers to come and be well, not come and get well. Our clients certainly deserve that.
-Meridian
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