Busy Professionals Don't Have Time to Volunteer!

At least maybe not the way we volunteered before taking a job with so much travel, working long hours, starting a family, paying down a mortgage, etc., etc.


By Flickr user Heraklit Well, we've stumbled on a volunteer program that comes to you – your office, that is, during the workday (if your boss says yes).

Starting in January, the women in the Portland office of Idealist.org will join forces to mentor a group of adolescent girls. The girls will stop by for a couple hours, twice a month, after the school day lets out.

We'll develop a project with them, something useful to them as well as to us, and compete against mentoring groups at other workplaces for top prizes. (The winning group of girls gets a school savings account opened up in their names.)

The idea—called the Associates Mentoring Program and part of Girls, Inc. of Oregon—developed out of conversations with professional women who volunteered at events for Girls, Inc. but wanted to do more. Many working professionals with busy travel schedules and family lives can tell you, holding down a regular volunteer gig can be tough! So we were all grateful to our colleague Meg for finding this opportunity for us.

The Associates Mentoring Program is fairly new so unless you are in Portland, OR, you may not be able to jump at this particular chance. Girls, Inc., however, is a national organization. We are keeping our fingers crossed that the program model will be adopted elsewhere.

Busy adults with families may be interested to know that Idealist does offer resources on volunteering as a family. (Volunteer resource managers wanting to recruit families should read this.)

Also check out this video about how to have a meaningful volunteer experience in 20 minutes:



Have you found creative ways to volunteer your time? We'd love to hear!

This post is by Amy, of The New Service blog and the Grad School Blog Project.