To Feel of Use Instead of Feeling Used in Volunteerism

“We can make gatherings that make people feel of use versus feeling used.”

So said Priya Parker in an October 2024 webinar called “How to Dream Up a Gathering You Actually Want to Host”. Her quote made me pause the session. Yes! How do we create volunteer gatherings that offer a sense of being of use? After all, none of us want to host volunteer projects or roles that leave folks feeling used.

Yet, it happens.

So say workshop participants and students in my classes. Here are a few of their responses when asked what makes for a positive or poor volunteer experience.

When we get volunteer engagement right, volunteers are more likely to feel of use rather than used. These lists remind us that volunteerism is not just about completing tasks with lower-cost labor, which can lead to feeling used. Instead it is about engaging with the community to meet a common purpose. That is more likely to help everyone feel of use.

Your Turn

You can facilitate this exercise with staff and/or volunteers to find a path toward “being of use”. (Bonus points if it helps the team refrain from saying the agency “uses” volunteers.)

• Invite your team to think or write about one experience as a volunteer: a positive time where they felt “of use” or negative time where they felt “used”. Discuss some of the experiences as a group. (If you want to get folks up and moving, you can ask them to line up according to how useful or used they felt in a volunteer role. Share one or two experiences along each section of the line.)
• Ask the group to identify characteristics of the experience that made them feel useful or used or a bit of both. Track the responses on a white board or flip chart.
• Look inward. Consider the departments, projects, or roles where your agency cultivates the useful and positive characteristics and where it might miss the mark.
• Identify practices, resources, and people that will sustain the useful experiences and improve those needing support.

A Roadmap to Feeling of Use

It is easy to get bogged down in our to-do lists and overlook opportunities for improvement. This exercise offers one way to pause and reflect on the volunteerism experience. The beauty of it is that it goes beyond merely asking about volunteer or staff satisfaction. Instead, it helps define what satisfaction looks—and feels—like. It offers the beginning of a roadmap for getting to the satisfaction that comes from feeling of use. This makes it a valuable supplement or alternative to surveys, especially if you want a more interactive method of feedback.

To Be of Use

This exercise is not just a feedback mechanism though. It can help us reconnect with why folks serve in the first place. One of the main reasons people volunteer is because they want to make a positive difference. They want to be of use.

In the last stanza of her poem, To Be of Use, Marge Piercy speaks to this deeper call of volunteerism and community.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

If we are lucky as volunteers, we have participated in a thing worth doing well done. If we are thoughtful and intentional as volunteer engagement professionals, we offer those experiences to the community members who want to serve with us.

Photo caption: Hans from Pixabay