Communiblog

Maximize your Impact: Volunteer your Skills

Sharing your skills benefits you and helps those with whom you share, but what if there was something more? 

What if sharing your skills meant that you made a significant social impact affecting tens or hundreds of people and helping empower them to reach their own goals, or the goals of their community?

Rest assured, there is a way: volunteering. Often people think of volunteering as simply giving time, but many volunteer opportunities encourage you to share your skills as well. As long as you are there, why not? It doesn’t cost you anything extra and you are doubling your productivity by giving both time AND skills.

Many great volunteer organizations like Taproot Foundation and Cross Cultural Solutions match skilled professionals with people in need of skills and training to cultivate sustainable solutions for disadvantaged communities.

Through Taproot Foundation, business professionals act as pro bono consultants to nonprofit organizations. This enables small organizations with even smaller budgets access to the business expertise and experience they need to succeed and make a positive social impact. Taproot expands the idea of ‘pro bono’ work beyond the field of law to include marketing, IT, management consulting, etc. and applies the skills to strengthen organizations that help entire communities. The website lists a slew of benefits for you as the volunteer as well. Your work is tax deductible, makes an unique and impressive addition to a professional portfolio or resume, and serves as a valuable networking opportunity.

Cross Cultural Solutions uses skill sharing to improve communities abroad. Students and professionals take their expertise to countries such as Ghana, India, South Africa, Russia and many others to provide skills-based training to individuals and organizations working to improve the infrastructure of their communities. Cross Cultural Solutions’ volunteer opportunities last anywhere from a week to several months, offering a great way to make a social impact with a short vacation or to create a meaningful, long-term cultural immersion experience. Your work with Cross Cultural Solutions also stands out on a resume and is a great way to meet like-minded professionals, as well as travel to parts of the world you may never have had the opportunity to visit otherwise. 

Volunteering your skills, either close to home or in a completely new cultural environment, improves communities by giving individuals and organizations the skills to help themselves.

What are some skill sharing volunteer organizations in your community? What are the resources that you can offer others? Share your thoughts in comments, twitter, and facebook!

Sharing for Grown-Ups: 5 Ways Skill Sharing Helps You

to share: (v.) to use, participate in, enjoy, receive, etc., jointly

We have (hopefully) been taught to share since legos, play-doh, and our toes – in that order- were the most desirable things to put in our mouths. Now that we are more or less grown-ups with more sophisticated tastes (omelets, asparagus, someone else’s toes), where does this childhood concept of sharing fit into our adult economies of Time=Money and Keeping up with the Joneses? Who has the time/money/goodwill to share something they have with someone else?

5 ways sharing your skills helps you:

1) Sharing makes friends. Your mom was right. As an act of cultivating community, sharing builds relationships between individuals and thus necessarily raises the relationship capital of both parties - you make friends. Now you can bond with Mr. Jones over learning his recipe for Killer Kick-Off Chili, even if his kid does go to a more expensive preschool than yours does.

2) Everyone wins. Especially with skill sharing, you raise the ability of those with whom you have formed a relationship. Your community has become better and more able. When you share your gardening tips with Mrs. Jones and her friends, the whole neighborhood becomes a more beautiful place.

3) You are the expert. When you teach a class or share a skill, your peers recognize you as an authority on the topic. This respect may even result in leads or referrals for your business. Are you an accountant? Share some great tax tips, your neighbors will think of you next time they – or people they know- are looking for professional financial guidance.  

4) Favors come back around. No harm in throwing some good will out into the universe. For the time that you spend teaching Mrs. Jones how to change her tire so she doesn’t get stranded in rural Wisconsin again, she will likely spend equal time in the future teaching you how to organize your inbox (yes, 976 unopened emails is too many.) 

5) You have nothing to lose. A skill is not lessened when shared. In fact, the proverbial two minds instead of one will likely increase the teacher’s ability as well. You never had a golfing buddy until you taught Mr. Jones the secrets to your signature swing. Now he is almost as good as you, and the competition is making you better every day.

So the next time you are practicing your skills all by yourself, or are all alone and wishing you were practicing your skills with someone, think about ways you can maximize what you have by sharing it. Make friends, get smarter, and it doesn’t cost a dime. Just ask the Joneses.

Have you ever swapped skills with someone? Tell us about it! Join our discussion in the comments, on twitter, and on facebook.

Find great people to share skills with in your area at www.CommuniTeach.com!