Greater Good South Africa

A true story
Mrs P runs a shelter for street children in Cape Town. She receives a call from a donor who finds herself unemployed and wants to volunteer. Not wanting to disappoint the donor, Mrs P must find something for her to do. Although Mrs P is very busy running her organisation, she arranges for the volunteer to play games with the children one afternoon a week. Because of the new Children’s Act, the volunteer must have a police check which Mrs P arranges and pays for.

The children enjoy the time with the volunteer and some of the children become very attached to her. A few months later, the volunteer gets a full-time job and can’t visit the children every week anymore. The children are devastated. They don’t understand why their new friend no longer wants to spend time with them. Having being let down by just about every adult they have ever known, they have been disappointed yet again.

Another true story
A company in KwaZulu-Natal has a volunteer week and wants the projects they support through their CSI programme to participate. One project, which looks after orphaned and vulnerable children, is near their offices. The company decides that this project will be visited every day for a week and, since it is almost Christmas, they will host parties for the same children every day using different groups of volunteers.

On the fifth day, it is the directors turn to volunteer. They arrive at the project late, during afternoon nap time, and are outraged to find the children asleep. The children are woken up and sleepily attend the party but the directors still complain. The project managers are embarrassed and must submit a grovelling apology to the company.

Opportunities to give back
We live in a country where there is no shortage of opportunities to get involved and give back, yet volunteering can sometimes be more about team building and individual fulfilment than making a valuable contribution. Volunteers, with the very best of intentions and without realising it, can even do damage in organisations and communities.

Mostly, volunteers don’t understand the consequences for an organisation with limited resources, of having to make themselves available, think up things for volunteers to do and devote time to managing volunteers. It takes great courage for an organisation to say no when volunteer offers come in, particularly from corporate donors.

So, given the very real pressures on organisations and the growing demand for volunteering opportunities, what is the right kind of volunteering? How can volunteers have a real and lasting impact on communities?

Understand your own community
Companies are made up of individuals, who all live and interact in a community. A great starting point for getting the volunteer mix right is to ask your staff what they care about and where they are already involved in their communities. Volunteering based on existing community engagement increases commitment and builds loyalty.

For individual volunteers, finding out what organisations in your community really need is the best place to start. Be guided by real community need, rather than by what you think organisations might want. See what the causes in our Myggsa giving community are asking for: http://www.myggsa.co.za/connect/requests/

Volunteer days: getting it right
An increasing number of companies set aside specific days in the year for volunteering. These basic principles will ensure all-round success for time bound volunteering programmes:

• Approach organisations as partners. Go and see them, if possible, and find out if there is a way to add value in a short space of time. Give them the option to say ‘no thanks’. 
• Once a partnership is agreed, draw up a detailed brief for staff. This helps people to understand the mandate of the organisation as well as what is expected of them on the day. 
• Plan and budget effectively. Interrogate whether or not your proposed intervention will add real value to the organisation after the intervention is complete. Make sure that you have understood what is required and the materials needed.
• Think through all eventualities and mitigate for them. For example, if the organisation says they need a vegetable garden, understand that someone needs to be responsible for taking care of it after you leave. If access to water is a problem for the organisation, put irrigation in at the same time. Think through who will pay the water bill and if the organisation will be able to afford it.

Commitment volunteering
True, sustainable development happens through a commitment over time so, ultimately, the most effective volunteering is long-term and intensive. And there is no shortage of opportunity: young entrepreneurs need business advice and access to networks; schools need leadership, management and governance support; non-profit organisations need help increasing operational efficiency; learners need extra tuition and career advice; child-headed households have no access to a parent figure; unemployed people need practical as well as life skills, police men and women need encouragement; the list goes on.

While these kinds of volunteering options are more time consuming, they are also the most rewarding. Research shows that regular volunteering has positive effects on both physical and emotional health[1]. This is truly the right kind of volunteering, benefitting volunteers and communities sustainably. 

Some excellent examples of this are:

• Symphonia pairs up business leaders and school principals on a year-long leadership programme where both have the opportunity to learn from each other – with very powerful results. The project is called School @ the Centre of Community.
• Vodacom’s Change the World programme pays the salaries of 10 skilled volunteers to work for non profit organisations for a year. Vodacom works with the organisations to identify their specific skills needs.

> Share your right kind of volunteering stories and questions with us by emailing 

Some parts of this article appeared in Trialogue's CSI Handbook 2011.