Henrietta Hay's Column

My timing is off, but my hearts in the right place. As a constant reader I should have remembered that Volunteers Week was coming up in April, but I didn't. So here are some belated thoughts on Volunteerism.

There was a time, not too long ago, when I was opposed to volunteerism on principle. If a job needs to be done, it needs to be paid for. Historically, most volunteers were women, and because society thought, "they didn't have anything else to do" it took advantage of them. The women didn't do "real" work. They licked envelopes and stamps and made coffee.

It's different today. A lot of things have changed, including the needs of agencies and institutions for volunteer help, and the attitudes and needs of the people doing the volunteering. So I have decided to join the real world.

I have become a volunteer! After all, we are all allowed to change our minds. I spend several hours a week in my old stamping grounds, the Mesa County Public Library, and what makes this different from licking stamps is that I'm using my brain instead of my tongue. They know and I know I am doing a job that needs to be done and that I know very well how to do. We also know that their staff does not have the time to do it and I do. Besides, they ply me with coffee and kind words, the volunteer's equivalent of a good paycheck. While I can't speak from experience, I expect that the same thing is true of volunteers in the eighty some other agencies here in Mesa County.

In 1989 nearly 40 million Americans performed unpaid work for some 50,000 organizations or institutions. That works out to about 20% of the population. I had assumed that retired people made up the largest group of volunteers, but one statistic really surprised me. The World Almanac, my handy-dandy reference source, says that more 35 to 44 year olds did volunteer work than any other age group. So much for the theory that the Baby Boomers are the me generation.

Economic pressures have made the use of volunteers, both men and women, essential to the smooth running of many institutions - hospitals, museums of all types, libraries, charitable groups, churches, political organizations.

But I am now looking at the business of volunteering from the other side. There are probably as many reasons for volunteering as there are people doing it. Some people get involved out of boredom or loneliness. Some simply like to keep busy all the time. Some have a deep need to serve, somewhere, somehow. Some are looking for a structure in retirement. Some are intensely interested in the specific job they are volunteering for. Many have a social agenda or cause for which they want to work. And then there are a lot of involuntary volunteers who are "invited" to give community service time as an alternative to jail time. Their motives may be mixed but their choices aren't.

We're everywhere. We comfort the dying through the Hospice program. We dig for dinosaur bones in Rabbit Valley. We help people with their income taxes. We pick up trash along the highways. We work in the hospitals. We shelve books. We run computers and typewriters and automobiles. I have a friend who drives nearly 200 miles twice a month to be a docent in the Heard Museum in Phoenix. Sometimes we are famous. Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch recently signed up to work as a volunteer doorman in his apartment building in Manhattan while the city's doormen were on strike.

Balancing the needs of the organization with the needs of the volunteer is like walking a tightrope. Volunteers must be motivated and encouraged. They need to believe that the work they are doing is important. But as volunteers they have definite obligations. They need to be responsible, to do only those things assigned, and to accept the limitations of their assigned jobs. Many enlightened organizations have directors of volunteers whose function it is not just to match the person to the job, but also to help maintain that balance. Organizations, which treat their volunteers badly, may well suffer in the public relations area.

Come to think about it, I've been volunteering for a long time. I've licked my share of stamps, usually for the losing candidates. But now I'm doing something that I think is important, and that I like to do. I'm glad I changed my mind.