Volunteering in Hard Times

A few months back, a2ethics.org did a podcast on how nonprofits could and should share their skills and resources to be more efficient and effective in their work(www.a2ethics.org/node/411). The groups willing to come under scrutiny for their sharing skills were The Wellness Community (www.thewellnesscommunity.org/semich) and Arbor Hospice (www.arborhospice.org).

As the current state of the economy makes this conversation prescient, at least with respect to looking at ways to deal with increasing needs when the financial ability to meet those needs is precarious, sharing skills and resources looks even predictable.

There is another way to look at sharing. It stands to reason that when gifts of money are becoming scarce, the wiser way to share with people in need or who are changing our lives for the better, is to share our time and effort.

So, a2ethics.org called the folks at Arbor Hospice and asked whether we could talk with one of their volunteers about this issue of giving time and effort.

We know that for a few years at least, there are nonprofits who have moved to paying some of their volunteers. This doesn't seem right to us. And I don't really know how I feel about mandatory volunteering, except that I think creating incentives to volunteer is a good thing overall. So, I guess that schools requiring public service and volunteering as part of their graduation requirement should keep on refining these programs, so that they do indeed create a generation of committed volunteers.

Anyway, back to Arbor Hospice, and more specifically to their volunteer coordinator Shelly Wagenknecht, with whom we had the pleasure to talk to awhile ago. Our subject? The ethics of volunteering, of sharing our time and effort without pay. In this case, it is time spent with people who decide to get care through a hospice.

First, a bit about hospice care. The name alone has a kind of ethics behind it. And a philosophy. It involves offering persons with terminal illnesses an alternative to institutional care and treatments as the ill person and his or her family and friends come to terms with the end of a life's journey.

And indeed, the word hospice itself comes from a place in earlier times where weary and ill travelers could go for hospitality.

There is alot of confusion about hospice care by members of the public. And we are not going to be able to clear this confusion up. If you are interested in the subject right now (for sooner or later on this site we will get to hospice care and its ethics, but it could be a long wait. You might want to read about its beginnings by googling Dame Cicely Saunders who founded the moderan hospice movement.)

Given the time of year when people are assessing their ideas about sharing, gift-giving and volunteering, we want to look at hospice volunteering rather than at hospice care itself.So that is why we connected with Shelly. As we talked about a wide range of topics in our conversation, a summary is probably best.

1. All volunteers, whether we are giving our time to wrap presents at Borders for Habitat for Humanity or offering assistance to people who are ill through hospice care, require some training and education. The education at Arbor Hospice is formal and informal. According to Shelly, hospice volunteers should have or cultivate certain virtues and ethical skills. The most essential: compassion, an ability to listen carefully without judging, a sense of humor and a mastery of knowing boundaries.

2. Acquiring knowledge of boundaries is critical, in part because we are there solely to help another person. But we can only help so much. There are limits. This becomes quite clear in situations, according to Shelly, when a volunteer does so much for the person he or she is giving comfort care to, that the person becomes dependent in inappropriate ways. And which then cross the line and break the boundary and bond of good volunteer care. So, for example, if a volunteer is taking in the child of a sick person just in order to temporarily help out, this goes above and beyond what a volunteer is supposed to be doing.

Not only that, hospice education for volunteers includes self-care. It is very easy to become attached to the person we are caring for. If the attachment is interfering with other important parts of a volunteer's life, then another boundary has been breached.

3. And finally, there is the issue of gifts and making sure that as a volunteer we do not expect any gifts as a result of our care. There have been occasions in Shelly's experience where the person she has been caring for and her fellow volunteers are offered gifts. These are offers of appreciation and gratitude for the volunteers' own gift and acts of sharing. It is easy to see how this relationship could be one of reciprocity. Yet, for the volunteer it is essential to turn such gifts down, even though they may be geniune. It is easy to see the potential for manipulation by the volunteer in particular (though not always)in such a relationship with a person who is at their most vulnerable.

There are other ethics dilemmas that volunteers with hospice confront in their work at Arbor Hospice. Shelly, however, believes that working for hospice itself has been a gift to her, providing her with an opportunity to share her time and effort in the most meaningful way. For her, volunteering is a pleasurable pursuit.

We know about the pleasures that people get from volunteering, and we also know some commentators claim that because of this volunteering, sharing and giving are selfish pursuits. And it is true in our career networking society, that volunteering can be a resume builder.

Trust us. This is not the case with Shelly.Her career is volunteering and her network is the people and their families she has comforted and cared for over the last twelve years.

If you want to contact Shelly and find out more about her work and volunteering at Arbor Hospice, please contact her at: swagenknecht@arborhospice.org.