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Top Six Ways Volunteering Helps Your Consulting Practice

By crooky | December 14, 2007

Yesterday was a day full of volunteering and volunteerism-related activities. I spent the morning speaking at Canadian Career moves about my CSI Methodology for job seeking. In the afternoon, I had coffee with a friend whom I am trying to help get a new job. In the evening, I was at the Christmas party for the Learning Disabilities Association of Vancouver – a non-profit organization I volunteer for and may soon be on the board of.

At my presentation in the morning, I had one of the attendees ask me “what do you get out of this. Why are you doing this?” This question comes up every time I do these presentations and I’m always a little taken aback. They’re confused when I tell them that I don’t get paid for coming to talk and that I’m not recruiting.

I have a good idea of why I volunteer and I want to take this opportunity to highlight some reasons why you, as a consultant, might want to consider volunteering if you’re not already doing so:

1. Networking

The nice thing about networking through volunteer work is that you can already tell something about everyone that’s volunteering with you – they have a similar sense of community and they’re not 100% focused on money. These are the kinds of people that make ideal clients and/or consulting partners. They focus on value, not money.

I would also suggest that their volunteerism is a strong indicator of their personality traits. Jerks don’t generally volunteer. Sure, I’ve met the odd incompetent volunteer in my day but intentionally obtuse? Never.

In short, volunteering allows you to meet new people who have some social values and are generally good people. There’s not really a downside.

2. Build Your Brand

If the above is true about the people you will meet while volunteering, it’s likely that people will attribute those same traits to you when they meet you in a volunteering context. They key is, if you go into these situations expecting to land a juicy client, you’re going to look like a jerk. True networking is about building relationships that could lead to a new client months down the road and probably through a referral.

There are two things that you can accomplish by networking through volunteerism – building awareness of your services in a low-pressure environment and building awareness of the kind of person you are. Ideally, six months down the road when one of your fellow volunteers talks to someone who is looking for a Market Intelligence Consultant, they’ll say “I know this guy who does that and he’s really a nice person.”

3. Learn or Develop Skills

We are all slaves to our qualifications at some point or another in our careers. The degrees that you have, the professional organizations you belong to and your work history all build up a profile of skills that potential and current employers use to categorize you. Unfortunately you have probably been in a situation where you cannot move into new roles to learn new skills because you lack the qualifications to move into that role. It’s a “catch 22” situation and I’ve been there.

Fortunately, volunteering gives you opportunities to try out new roles that your clients probably wouldn’t take a chance on with you. Join a board of directors. Become an events planner for a non-profit conference. Write advertising copy. Once you’ve had some experience doing these things in a voluntary capacity, you will have some portfolio pieces that you can hold up to show clients so that they’ll let you do things you don’t normally do.

4. Gain Experience

In some business schools, there is a heavy emphasis on case studies. The purpose of going through these case studies is to give students awareness of the various kinds of situations that might come up in their professional life. After you leave school, every job you have is an opportunity to learn new case studies and build your experience base. Every client project you complete is a case study you can reference to new potential clients.

Volunteering allows you to expand your base of case studies and likely in fields that you don’t normally work in. For example, right now I’m doing a lot of volunteer work for the Learning Disabilities Association. Someday, that might lead to a gig where I’m working on LD policy for a government agency or something of that nature.

5. Mental Health

As consultants, it’s easy to fall into the depression trap. Unlike our salaried contemporaries, we toil away with little or no human contact outside of our immediate family. There’s no water cooler talk to keep our mind spry at home. There’s also no cheerleaders to make you feel good about yourself at home. My wife is an excellent cheerleader for me but she’s also extremely biased. A little bit of outside reinforcement does a world of good.

Volunteering will get you praise, compliments and it will make you feel valued and needed – these are things you might not get when you’re working for yourself. My clients are great but they’re not responsible for my self esteem. I am.

Most of all, meeting new people is good for your mental health. Making new friends and contacts – people that you can go out for coffee with on short notice. That kind of thing. Your business will suffer if you don’t have people who are not clients and not family to talk to about work, life and everything that happens in between.

6. Pay Back Society

Last, but not least – you have at some point in your life benefited from the services of a non-profit organization whether you know it or not. That group, whoever they were, did you a favour. I believe that everyone should do their best to pay that favour forward in any way that they can. Donating money is good but making time for these organizations is quite often more valuable.

…….
So, if you’re thinking that you should get volunteering soon, here’s a great place to look for opportunities:

Volunteer Canada

Charity Village

If you’re in the US, this seems like a good site

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

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Topics: Business of Consulting |

One Response to “Top Six Ways Volunteering Helps Your Consulting Practice”

  1. Baljit Says:
    July 22nd, 2008 at 9:15 am

    Great article and for me a timely one to be found when this is exactly what I have been thinking about.

    I like your down to earth, here is the information, style of writing.

    Keep it up please.

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