Volunteering

Our family is involved with a number of worthy nonprofit organizations, and I do a fair amount of volunteering. To be honest, I don't so much do this because they need me; there are many, many needy people and organizations in the world and I am not always motivated to help them. Sometimes I do it because it's a quick thing I can do to help out (I think of this as mini-volunteering). More often I do it because I want to build my own community, and getting together with people to do a helpful activity is a great way to get to know them. Then there are the times that I can really take the lead on something that I enjoy for the sake of the project itself. These categories are just off the top of my head. I am continually being asked to volunteer for more things, so I thought I would take a look at what all I am doing volunteerwise, to see the big picture.

Temple
My big volunteer commitment for temple is that I co-direct Mitzvah Day, a day of community service involving about 400 kids doing nine different service projects (one for each grade). This takes many hours of organization spread over many months. The most fun part is that I work with a terrific co-director, who has become a friend primarily through this collaboration, and connect with many parents to help them run the projects for their grade. It is also pretty darn satisfying to help make so much community service happen. In addition to Mitzvah Day, I organize the annual "schmoozes" for religious school parents, which is easy to do. I also help with one-off things like office work and honey cake; since we live nearby, it's easy for me to pitch in with little stuff.

School
I am pretty excited to make friends with other families at our new school, so I volunteered to be the room parent for second grade, which will put me in communication with a particularly terrific bunch of families (who will be our cohort for four years, presumably). I am also going to go ahead and volunteer to do procurement for their annual fundraising auction, because I think I will be working with people I'll like, doing something that I'll be good at.

Boychoir
For boychoir, I have done only mini-volunteering. I might do some ushering, but that is pretty self-interested (ushers attend concerts for free!), and I want to chaperone the tour next summer. My experience is that boychoir does not foster community among the parents the way temple and school do; boychoir is mainly about the boys.

There is also another category of activities that I am tempted to call volunteer activities, but because they are part of my academic life, they are called "service." These activities are expected of me as part of my work culture. I am not specifically rewarded for them the way I might be if I was faculty, but it's what people like me do, and it is often a way to collaborate with colleagues I like as well as make things happen that I am glad to see happen. Examples of service activities are reviewing papers (either formally or informally), mentoring or advising students at other institutions, serving as an elected representative in my professional community, writing an op-ed advocating for science funding, and so on.