Yellowfire Press

by Ivan Scheier

@ -- permission for use-with-acknowledgment

CHAPTER SIX

Looking Further for the Future

Challenge and Response
Here we are at the last chapter and still nowhere near the perfect society. For when all the MINI-MAX and Need-Overlap matches have been make, many needs will remain unmet. True, a large proportion of Glad Gives, perhaps 80-90%, prove useful to other people, and that helps a great deal. But the reverse is not logically necessary, nor is it likely to be factually true: that 80-90% of all needs in the world can be filled by Glad Give. (1) The overall experience from Need-Overlap Analysis seems more realistic; about 15-20% of volunteer Glad Gives overlap (are relevant to) the needs of staff and/or clients.

What about all the needs which people are not glad or even willing to fill? We can of course pay people to do the unenjoyable assuming we have the money and they need it badly enough. We can also manipulate situational characteristics of work to make it more attractive to people. The foundations of a system for doing this have been described elsewhere. (2)

But People Approach differs from either of these two options because it focuses on what’s coming from the "inside" of people rather than what’s offered from the outside: financial or situational. This means careful avoidance of any pressure on people to do this or that: instead we concentrate on complete listening.

Thus far, People Approach listening has been terms of Glad Gives and this has taken us far. But, as we have seen, when the Glad Gives are gone, people still hurt and hunger and lack. We must therefore ask if there are additional categories in terms of which we might more intensely explore what people have to give.

These categories should be clear, understandable and realistic enough so that people can use the categories to inventory themselves, with little or no outside promotion. The self-survey results must also be potentially useful in meeting needs.

Two promising candidates are emerging at the growing edge of People Approach: Do-It-Anyhows and Quests.

Do-It-Anyhows
Do-It-Anyhows are activities a person has compelling reason to perform. These reasons exist prior to and independent of any attempt on our part to persuade the person to help.

Examples of a volunteer coordinator’s Do-It-Anyhows might be:

• Training volunteers next Tuesday evening
• Regularly reading a professional journal
• Putting up volunteer recruiting posters all over town
• Tabulating and analyzing volunteer program statistics
• Writing the annual report
• Writing a letter to the editor praising volunteers
• Terminating an unsuitable volunteer
• Driving to work every weekday

The list illustrates a distinction between Do-It-Anyhows and Glad Gives. You don’t necessarily enjoy a Do-It-Anyhow; you might be doing it mainly because you have to and/or you might be bored by having done it over and over again.

Chances are a person will reasonably well practiced and experienced in a Do-It-Anyhow activity, but this is by no means certain. You might never get good at firing a volunteer, no matter how many times you have to do it. Roughly the comparison looks something like this:

Glad Give	Desire	Competency
	Yes	No
Do-It-Anyhow	Maybe, but probably less than Glad Give	Probably but not certainly

In other words, the Do-It-Anyhow is somewhat uncertain in either or both criteria for a Glad Give: Desire and Competency. Therefore, Do-It-Anyhows will often not appear on a person’s list of Glad Give. Nevertheless, some help can sometimes be gotten from Do-It-Anyhows, and this makes them a People Approach resource additional to Glad Gives.

Thus, if I’m going food shopping anyhow, and you know about it, I could mail a letter for you on the way. Save you a trip.

If you’re training your volunteers next Tuesday evening, I might sit in and observe because I need to learn more in this area.

If I’m reading a professional journal anyhow, I might alert you to significant articles, or even summarize them for you. You might do the same for me for another journal.

If you’re driving to work every day, could we carpool?

If I’m putting up posters all over town, I might agree to put up a couple of your posters (if they don’t compete with mine).

The examples suggest a pitfall. When hitching a helping ride on a Do-It-Anyhow, you are adding inconvenience to the life of a person who never said they were glad to give. Therefore, you must be especially careful to minimize the "extra trouble" the help-connection causes the Do-It-Anyhower. If I want to observe your volunteer training, I must promise to stay out from underfoot, and keep that promise. All the better if I do a little something for you in return, like pass out worksheets for you at the session, or, at your request share with you my perceptions of training. I’ll be there anyhow.

The inconvenience issue explains why we exhaust gladly given contributions first, before getting to the Do-It-Anyhow layer of People Approach. This problem also must be dealt with when we ask people to list their Do-It-Anyhows. We must decisively reassure people that (a) the act of inventorying doesn’t commit them to anything and (b) they are perfectly free to keep an additional list of "None-Of-Your-Business" items, written in invisible ink, of course.

After these important preliminaries, I usually request the survey in two parts:

1. an activity list of regular doings, much like Worksheet #2 in Need-Overlap Analysis (Chapter 5) except capable of including off-work as well as at work activities.
2. Special things you expect to be doing in the next two weeks; for example, visiting relatives in Atlanta, Georgia, attending a local workshop on networking, doing your income tax, etc.

It is sometimes also useful to ask people to indicate on their lists activities they might be relatively more willing to share with other people because it’s less inconvenient to do so and/or because there’s a better chance of getting something useful in exchange.

The, insofar as the Do-It-Anyhowers are willing, the negotiations begin. We who are seeking help review the lists, and do our creative best to persuade sharing of Do-It-Anyhows by removing inconvenience blocks as previously discussed, and maybe offering trades as well.

Paralleling the Do-It-Anyhow in the realm of materials and facilities is the Have-It-Anyhow. Examples include a place to meet, an excellent private library of books and journals, and spare copies of last year’s highly successful volunteer recognition certificate.

Quests
The desire to learn and grow and the desire for variety of experience in one’s life have always been high on the list of motivations for volunteering. "Quests" is a concept/category which enables us to tap into these motives in a concrete, specific way.

A Quest is either:

1. some knowledge or information you’d like to have

or

2. some activity you would like to try because you want to learn more about it or because you’re just curious.

A prospective volunteer’s Quest list might include:

Learn cause of juvenile delinquency
Go river rafting
Learn automobile maintenance and repair
Learn creative writing
Have passenger ride in a small airplane
Learn operation of computers
Learn how to write a resume
Meet people of different ethnic or racial backgrounds

The (self-rated) desire is there in a Quest, but the competency is doubtful and presumably absent. People who lack experience in an area are unlikely to be instant experts.

Thus the comparison is:

Glad Give	Desire	Competency
	Yes	No
Quest	Yes, but see later	Probably not

Clearly, whoever accepts an individual’s Quest is at risk on the effectiveness of the person’s performance. But this makes less difference in some cases than in others. Thus, a person can quite easily and quickly become an "effective" passenger in a small airplane. But proficiency in computer operation or automobile repair, does not come in a day.

Therefore, the organization which accepts an individual’s Quest does so with the responsibility to provide supervision and/or training or at least experience which will satisfy the volunteer’s desire to learn and grow. From the organization’s point of view, this is a disadvantage of Quests vis-à-vis Glad Gives; you would usually have to give more in return for a Quest. But this, too, is a matter of degree depending on how well what the organization is doing coincides with the Quest. Take, for example, a program in which volunteer work with juvenile delinquents through shared recreation experiences, including river rafting and airplane rides. At least three of the Quests in our example could be satisfied via normal training (causes of delinquency) and activities of the organization; no extra trouble is involved in satisfying the volunteer’s Quest. In fact, the match between Quest and program need helps assure good motivation on the part of the volunteer. Even Quests not used directly in the program will be useful to the volunteer’s supervisor as keys to what freshens up motivation for that person.

But even the motivational aspect has its uncertainties (hence, the "Yes, but…" in the table comparing Glad Gives and Quests). The urge for a ride in a small airplane may evaporate at 500 feet on a rough day. A similar possibility exists for eagerness to meet people of different racial background when you discover that, early on at least, these people don’t fully trust you. Even when a person does enjoy an activity, as they expected to, the novelty might soon wear off. Generally Quests are based on anticipated enjoyment of an activity, and there’s always the chance this prediction may be wrong.

For all these reasons, Quests, like Do-It-Anyhows, are a secondary vein mined in People Approach, after the primary vein of Glad Gives has been thoroughly explored.

But there’s gold in them thar hills just the same. The desire to learn and grow and expand one’s experience, tapped by Quests, makes for some exciting volunteers, the kind who push us instead of having to be pushed by us.

So get your list of Quests, asking people to be as specific as possible. You’ll probably encounter less worry about being exploited sharing Quests, than in the case of Do-It-Anyhows. After all, acceptance of a Quest implies the opportunity to satisfy curiosity and to learn, a very human venture.

From Now On

So, we have cast our net wider now;

Glad Gives
Very Glad Gives, perhaps
Once-In-A-Whiles
Information Leading To’s
Do-It-Anyhows
Quests.

When we have taken that longer role call of offerings, we are distinctly closer to validating what seemed like mere slogan ten years ago.

There is no such thing as an apathetic person

Because

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