The New Volunteerism Project

The Archival Collection of
Ivan Henry Scheier

Section V

Making Dreams Come True
(without much money)

June 1999

Ivan Scheiers' book Making Dreams Come True Without Money, Might or Miracles is
now available at Energize, Inc.

 

Introductory Notes on Making Dreams Come True
Ivan Scheier
June, 1999

“Rules for Dreamers" has been published several times in the present decade, notably in The Journal of Voluntary Action and GRAPEVINE. “On Becoming a Dreamcatcher” was published a few years ago in GRAPEVINE. Together, the articles form the core of a book due for publication in late 1999 by Energize Inc., of Philadelphia, PA. The provisional title of the book is “Making Dreams Come True Without Much Money: The Midwifery of Dreams.”

This book will essentially become the present section in far more complete, detailed form, so elaborative commentary on content is unnecessary in this preface. Besides, the development is too recent to trigger even my low threshold for revisionism. The book, however, is unlikely to devote much attention to the material’s significance in my career evolution (or devolution), and I would like to outline that here.

“Making Dreams Come True (without much money)” is first of all what volunteering was all about in earlier times. I spent about 20 years concentrating on relatively structured programs in agencies, typically hungering for money, copying methods from business/corporations whose primary purpose was getting money and then using it to achieve the goal of getting even more money. Towards the end of my career I began yearning to recapture the original vision. (I remain in shock that the rare part of Western Society for which, avowedly, money was not the main object, chose to copy so slavishly from the part of which money was the main object.)

Related, I began to react against the formalization of volunteering in organized programs as the dominant mode of the field called “Volunteer Administration.” Again, I hoped to recapture a vision of volunteering as what ordinary people could do as individuals, or in small informal groups, without others organizing their altruism for them by screening, training, supervising them etc.

Finally, in the later years of my work, I began to see that volunteers were just one kind of participant in what I called “a new helping team” not excluding anyone just because they happened to be paid, or a homemaker, or a student, etc. True, the”Making Dreams Come True” message assumes people will most often do so without using money as the major achiever. But the main point is that paid people, too can have dreams, especially at times when, for various reasons, these dreams cannot be purchased outright.

Please Note: – Though, as noted, “Rules For Dreamers” has been published several times, the copy provided here was written and circulated prior to these publications, with content identical to them. – The forthcoming book alluded to is intended to be placed in this section of the achieves when it is published.