Volunteer Motivation

Why do people volunteer?  When we ask our potential mentors this question, there are typically two types of responses: an altruistic desire to help others (i.e. make a difference in the life of child, support a teenager, etc.) and/or a recognition that volunteering is also good for oneself (i.e. that it feels good to volunteer and to help others, that it would get the volunteer out to do activities, meet people, etc.).  While both of these responses are accurate, apparently the reasons for volunteering affect one’s benefits from the experience.

I recently read an interesting article about volunteer motivation.  The article states that people whose volunteer motivation is more to help others than to help themselves had more benefits to their own well-being than those whose motivation was more about helping themselves.  In fact, those whose primary motivation for volunteering was that it would be helpful to their own well-being did not have any better results in well-being than those who did not volunteer at all!   

Since volunteering to be a mentor to a child is volunteering in a relationship in which the volunteer is a supportive figure to the child (and not the reverse!), it’s especially important for prospective mentors to have other social supports.  Although there are certainly benefits to mentors in terms of having fun and feeling good about themselves for helping a child, our focus is on the mentor giving of themselves and supporting the child and any benefits to the mentor would be secondary.  Mentoring is such a potentially rewarding way to volunteer since the focus is on helping others, and yet most matches have fun together and our volunteers often say they receive more than they give!  Please check out our website www.kidsnkinship.org for more information on mentoring a child today!