Why Volunteering Matters To Me (And Why It Should Matter To You, Too)

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Galen Low: Hey folks, thanks for tuning in. My name is Galen Low with The Digital Project Manager. We are a community of digital professionals on a mission to help each other get skilled, get confident, and get connected so that we can amplify the value of project management in a digital world. If you want to hear more about that, head on over to thedigitalprojectmanager.com/membership.

All right, today we are talking about how volunteering can give you an unfair advantage in your project management career. And also, we're going to be dispelling some of the myths about volunteering that are probably holding you back. With me today to share some personal stories is agency expert, founder, and serial volunteerer, Mr. Karl Sakas. 

Karl, thanks for being with us today. 

Karl Sakas: Galen, great to be here. Great to be back. 

Galen Low: I was so excited about this episode because we recorded another episode together, which I'll publish separately, but when I was digging into your background, I'm like, there is so much volunteer experience here. I've jokingly introduced you as a serial volunteerer, which is not a real word, by the way, but you seriously have so much volunteer stuff on your CV from the beginning, right up to present day.

I'm dying to ask you, what drives you to volunteer so much of your time beyond maybe just paying it forward? Is it that you see where things could be better if cash wasn't a limiting factor, or is it something else entirely? 

Karl Sakas: I mean, paying it forward is important. I've volunteered since first grade starting in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and 4-H and various roles since then, that was an important priority growing up.

And in my family, my parents were both career army officers. So the idea of kind of a larger civic duty was always an important thing. But I mean, you can also consider if someone's thinking about volunteering, there are also some very direct personal benefits around career development. And then getting opportunities in your career that you might not have any paid jobs that you can then use to get a paid job doing.

So part of it is giving back, but certainly I've gotten all kinds of experience through volunteering that I may not have gotten as soon in paid roles. 

Galen Low: Love that. 

You had told me in the green room, some pretty interesting stories about what you have been able to gain in terms of experience through volunteering. I'd love to get into those stories. I'm framing it around this question of what are some things that someone can get from volunteering that maybe they actually can't get through just paid employment? 

Karl Sakas: One of the biggest things is that if you are leading a volunteer team, you don't have salaries or pay as a way to motivate people. Ha, your volunteer team is there because they want to be there.

And if they don't want to be there and they aren't getting whatever rewards they want, they're going to leave. And so my experience, for instance, leading a marketing trade association chapter, 700 members of whom a hundred were volunteers and of those 15 people on the executive board being the president of a group where no one was getting paid other than an association management person and administrative support, I mean, that was tough. 

I had to understand, for my executive team, what was motivating them? Were they looking for, for instance, their next job? And this was the key thing to help make that happen. Were they looking for fulfillment outside of work that they maybe weren't getting from the work?

And this was an opportunity. Understanding people's motivations and how I could tie our mission to what the volunteer wanted so they were doing it for themselves, not just because I wanted them to do it, I mean, that's really tough. And if you can do that, imagine if you're motivating and finding alignment with team members who are paid employees, where also you're paying them to be there. In really, it's a very tough job managing people in a volunteer organization. But if you can do that, your paid job is going to seem easy by comparison. 

Galen Low: I didn't even think about about the sort of like monetary incentive going away.

What you mentioned about understanding people's motivations, like what a great skill to have under your belt as a project manager where you might not have formal authority, you're managing by influence. And even just that dimensionality of people are in it for different reasons, not just the paycheck and not just because somebody's their boss or because, you have the project charter that you can wave around and be like, I control what you do.

I have that authority, but actually like understanding people, building relationships with people to motivate them in a different context. One thing you also mentioned there is like the volunteer experience, put you in front of an executive committee. That was like one of your roles and it just struck me that I'm like, Oh yeah volunteering doesn't necessarily mean doing grunt work that is sort of low on the chain.

It jumps out at me that you're in a volunteer role that dealt with some pretty senior folks who, in their paid day jobs or in their careers before that, were pretty heavy hitters. Were those intimidating executives that you don't really get taught to sort of have conversations with early on in your career.

Was that an early volunteering role for you, or did you have to kind of build your way up to that? 

Karl Sakas: I've been on three nonprofit boards as a director on two boards and eventually as president of a third. And actually there was another, okay, oh, I forgot one fourth. I was the vice president for that one.

The alumni association board. I mean, board service is an interesting thing. My experience on board roles was that I started as a frontline volunteer, and I would take on more and more responsibility, and then I would get invited to join the board. For instance, I was on the board of a different marketing trade association, and that was actually how I found my, my job as a director of client services at an agency.

One of my fellow board members, I was co-director of programming for that particular group. And one of my fellow board members was like, Karl, I don't know if you're looking for a new job, but I love how organized you are and just, getting stuff done. It would be great to have someone like you at our agency.

And I'm like, well, actually, I'd be interested to hear more. I met with his business partner, whom I had never met before. I actually brought my resume, a printout of my resume to the interview. Thinking I haven't applied. They haven't seen my info other than maybe LinkedIn. Maybe they'd like to see a resume.

I'm like, imagine getting an interview without even applying. When you're a great volunteer, people notice it. Whether you're in a board role or otherwise, and that can lead to some helpful opportunities, but my experience was working as a frontline volunteer and then eventually getting recruited to the board.

Some people could get recruited based on, say, an executive role to join a board without volunteering first. But I mean, do consider you want to get to know the organization and the organization's culture before you make a big commitment to them. Are they an organization that recognizes people for getting things done or are they perhaps less grateful?

For instance, in one of my VP roles in the American Marketing Association chapter, one of the things that I did is I would send thank you notes to members of my team based on things they were getting done and would team member organize an event. So of course, I sent a thank you note. And about a week later, I got an email from the team member and she said, I've been working in marketing for 20 years.

And this is the first time I have ever received a thank you note from a boss. You get to be, if you're opting for a managerial role, you get to be the type of manager you want to be rather than the one, maybe you're constrained to, I mean, there's still constraints in volunteering. You also don't have to be in a leadership role as a volunteer. It's up to you. 

Galen Low: I like this notion that the currency is different. Do you know what I mean? Like at the top, we were talking about, yeah, like these people aren't being paid. So it's not that financial incentive that you can just lean on, which is often the reason why, bosses aren't sending thank you notes necessarily.

They're like, well, you're getting paid to do this, but it would still go a long way, even in a situation where they were getting a paycheck and a thank you note. What a great way as a manager to like, differentiate yourself, show your appreciation. And I liked that it kind of like develops as a skill because it, in a volunteer world, you'd be like, I can't pay you, but I can say thank you.

Karl Sakas: Yeah. Saying thank you is free. I occasionally will meet agency owners in my consulting work, not too many these days, but sometimes where, people are like, well, what am I supposed to give them a trophy just for showing up? Well, I mean, no, but you know, what you think of as just showing up, but it's taken a lot of effort from the team member to get things done.

And, again, even if they're just, they're showing up, well, I mean, whatever they're making your life easier. Don't miss that. It's an important thing to consider.

Galen Low: I see that happen often where gratitude is seen as a mechanism that lowers the bar somehow. It's I said thank you for that, and now they think that's that the expectation is lower or that's, every time they're going to do their job.

It's like this folks who, I'm neither of these people, by the way, the folks who clap when a pilot successfully lands the plane and the people who hate the people who clap because the pilot successfully landed the plane because that's their job. 

Karl Sakas: I mean, ultimately, I think the only time I've, I've clapped was after a particularly challenging flight where everyone was like, finally, it's over.

I think the clapping was for being done, not necessarily for the actual actual fine, but I mean, so what if someone's clapping after routine flight? But, saying thank you is, is free. For instance, one of the bands that I like is called the Wailin' Jennys. It's a pun based on Waylon Jennings, which in fact, the Canadian connection to all the three band members are Canadian, but. 

I would say but, or maybe because of this, toward the end of the show, they, as they're wrapping up, but before the last, last few songs, they actually paused to thank every single person working at the theater, like at the venue, even, like people working in marketing or sort of front office stuff by name.

And it's a reminder, yeah, it's they're the three people on stage, but there are like 20 other people making it happen. 

Galen Low: Yeah. So much goes on in the background for that. And like circling back, I love this idea of having the opportunity through volunteering, not necessarily just through volunteering, but definitely can help to build your own style instead of sort of falling in line with the culture of wherever you're working.

And there's a great example of Hey, yeah, we are our own band entity. Right? And we do want to be that group. Not every concert ends with rolling the credits on everyone involved, but yeah, we can be that and sort of developing that style outside of what can be, especially in an agency world, right?

Like the culture is, thick and palpable and you're expected to "drink" the Kool Aid and tow the party line, but in some ways getting experience where you can develop your own style outside of that can really contribute to where you go and how you progress through your journey. 

Karl Sakas: Yes. And it's also less disruptive to say, try a few different volunteer roles and then maybe narrow in on some of them than to change your full time job. 

Galen Low: Yes. Oh, that's a, that's actually a really good one. 

I wonder if we can kind of dive into that a little bit, because I think a lot of folks I talk to, sometimes it just seems so binary. It's to volunteer or not to volunteer. And I think what sometimes gets lost in the mix is like the different shapes that volunteering can take. And that, like it does, it's an art to be able to find the right volunteer opportunities that are a good fit for you, like your skills, your schedule and your goals.

I was wondering if you had any advice for folks who are like trying to find the right volunteer opportunity? It's intimidating. They're like, I don't know, like it's such a commitment. What are some options that they can look for? 

Karl Sakas: I would start by thinking about what are causes that are important to you.

If you love animals, something related to animal welfare is probably a good place to start. And so, there are nonprofits for everything. You might also look at trade associations in your industry. So that could be the American marketing association, the American advertising federation, AIGA, IABC, PRSA, like that could be a good place to start, but start with causes you care about, organizations that that are important.

You can do a search for organizations like that near you. I mean, you, there are probably groups that you may have donated money to that have volunteers or maybe a local chapter where you could volunteer something like that. There are also volunteer match services, right, where you can do a search for volunteer match and find some sites that will have directories of all of your openings and organizations and so on.

That would be another place to start. And the key thing is that as you're evaluating options before you start contacting groups, start thinking about the type of volunteer role you want. Do you want, for instance, something where the role is sort of continuous? Where you're basically appointed to a position and you're doing that job for a year or something like that?

It could be a little more flexible. Or are you looking for something more, say, event based? Maybe you help out at an event and if you like it, you do more. And if you don't, that's it. Or something maybe that is shift based, for instance, in my volunteering with the USO, the military connected charity. I've had a lot of past roles where it's, you're on the board.

It's almost like a part time job. I like that in my USO volunteering, I show up for a 4 hour shift at the airport travel lounge travel center. I help our guests and help fulfill the overall mission. And then go home. And there are pros and cons to different roles, I've had a lot that are very intense in the past, and those are rewarding. But also exhausting, at times, so you don't have to start by making a huge commitment.

For instance, maybe it's doing one habitat for humanity house build and see do you like it? And do you want to get more involved? And then, of course, if you want, you can get even more involved. I met someone through other volunteering who would caravan around the U.S. at an RV working on habitat for humanity builds all over the country. 

Finally, I think they said that their kids said that now that the parent was in their 70s, maybe shouldn't be up on the roof building houses anymore. But there's something for everyone and importantly, be picky. I mean, be open, but be picky, right? You might have a skill that you don't want to use, and the organization's oh, you know how to do such and such.

We want you to do that. You don't have to do it. That doesn't mean you, for instance, your project manager, you could do project management for the group, but maybe you want to do something else. Maybe you want to learn how to do social media marketing, for instance. Maybe you want to do something related to fundraising. Maybe it's something else. So you get to choose and can set boundaries about what you do as a volunteer. 

Galen Low: I love that because my head always goes to sit on a board, continuous, take it home with you. My wife sits on a few boards. She's like fielding emails like at midnight. And I'm like, I couldn't do that.

And then also that fear that I'll be sort of typecast into a role, right? Oh, I'm so glad we have a project manager on the board. You get all the projects, you can say no, and you can have that goal of I'm actually, the skill I really want to develop is this thing that no one would pay me to do right now.

But because it's, but I can help out and I'm willing to learn, I've got that sort of desire and energy to sort of figure it out for this group. 

Karl Sakas: Figure out and also where you have a fair amount of creative control. 

Galen Low: Ah, yeah. Okay. 

Karl Sakas: You can build things the way you want to. Obviously, it has to be aligned to the mission, but there's a lot of flexibility within that. And it's an opportunity to try out new things and do things your way as long as it's aligned to the mission and that's fine. 

Galen Low: I like that. I also like that you started with a sort of find something you're passionate about. Because earlier, one thing that struck me was you were on a board and it so happened that someone who worked at an agency helped you get a job. And in my head I'm like Oh, should people be like strategizing to find what boards this person at the company where they want to work sits on and then devise the scheme to like volunteer and bump into them, at a volunteer sort of event and that's the strategy? 

But gathering, that's not really how you would approach it. You would approach it as, I'm here to get some experience. 

Karl Sakas: You could do a very Machiavellian approach, but that sounds exhausting and probably isn't going to work very well. And no one will be happy to work with you because they'll pick up that you have some agenda, if not obviously noticing that you have some sort of an agenda.

So volunteer because you want to volunteer. Start by doing more frontline volunteering to see, do you like the organization? I wouldn't do the Machiavellian approach. You could, but I don't recommend it. 

Galen Low: In some ways it's not in the spirit of it, right? Like earlier you were saying like, sometimes your work as a volunteer speaks for itself and that's what gets noticed. And I loved that you called out that it might be pretty obvious that you have an agenda because of that, 

Karl Sakas: exactly. And of course, volunteering, we're thinking primarily about volunteering for nonprofits. There are other ways to volunteer, like mentoring, giving career advice, things like that, where the recipient isn't necessarily a nonprofit, but you know, it's nice to help out a student as early in their career.

Galen Low: I really enjoy that, that you don't have to necessarily go and find a nonprofit to work for. You could, but also you could just volunteer your time. 

Which actually is a good segue because when I'm looking at the amount you volunteer and also the amount of content you produce and, you're running your own business. And I'm like, how has Karl had the time? Do you have a strategy for how you organize your time to volunteer? Because I think that's a lot of the holdback for people is that they're like, Ah, I'd love to volunteer, but I haven't got the time, life's so busy. How do you make time to volunteer? 

Karl Sakas: In my current work, my volunteering is primarily shift based.

So I book a time on the volunteer calendar, I show up, I volunteer, and that's that. So that could include the USO volunteering, I also will do guest lecturing or guest speaking for student chapters of my business fraternity, this is Alpha Kappa Psi, a co-ed professional business fraternity. So, in that case, it's, I'll schedule and, either I'm joining via Zoom or might be in-person kind of thing.

Basically I can schedule. It would be harder if I were doing more of a, well, I would say full time more of a part time role. Like for instance, being a chapter advisor or a manager of chapter advisors, for instance, that would be harder. Or for instance, being the president elect and running our conference and then president. That was 20 hours a week for two years.

I do not recommend starting with that. And actually, I mean, that's not a good match for most people. On the other hand, when I was the VP of programming for the AMA chapter, AMA Triangle, that was about 20 hours a month. And most of that was concentrated around our luncheon event and then the monthly board meeting.

So it's like luncheon event, monthly board meeting, and then I've had an additional team meeting leading the programming team. In that case, that also was scheduled, and there were things in between, and I knew that right before we'd have a luncheon speaker, don't schedule particularly intense work stuff the day before or the day of. But then I know that things would sort of go down and the better you are at delegating and building, this is if you're in a role in leadership, hiring as it were the right team and matching their incentives to your incentives and so on. That makes it a lot easier. 

On the other hand, if you hire a bunch, in our previous episode, we talked about new rope versus wet twine. If you hire a bunch of wet twine as your team, you're going to make a lot of extra work for yourself.

Galen Low: I love that idea that you have built a business that accommodates your volunteering. Not necessarily the opposite, not like they don't speak to each other at all, but knowing your goals for volunteering and picking the right opportunities allows you to fit it in, right? So like you have, right now you need more predictable chunks of time that you don't take home with you necessarily because, you're doing other things.

But also you're able to lean on your team. You've hired a team. You work with people that can support your volunteering so that, it's important to you and you can actually sort of make the time for it. 

Karl Sakas: That ties into whatever your other commitments are. If you have kids and schedule is, particularly packed around their activities.

Maybe you're not going to do in-person volunteering, but maybe there's some volunteering you'll do remotely from 8 to 9 PM or something like that. There are a lot of options. Make sure you find one that's right for you. And you can also try a little bit of volunteering at a couple organizations, or maybe start with one, maybe add a couple more and decide which ones best merit your help and things are match.

You're allowed to resign from a volunteer role. I wouldn't ghost, but it's okay to sit down and say, hey, life is busy with other things and I, I won't be able to continue. It's okay. People understand. They may not love it, but like it's normal. 

Galen Low: I'm glad you mentioned that because like at the top, I've kind of promised that we're exploring the myths around volunteering and I know I haven't put a fine point on it, but I think we've covered a few and I think that's the biggest one. I think a lot of folks look at a volunteer role and because there's no exchange of money, there's a guilt involved in stepping away and even my wife, like her paying job, she became very busy and the board she was sitting on, she had to step down.

And less so her, but definitely other folks would, there's a lot of like guilt and resistance to want to do that. Cause you're feeling like you're letting this organization down that, needed your help. And now it's going to be a hassle for them to find someone else to be on the board or chair the meetings or what have you.

At the end of the day, it shouldn't be an expectation that you're there forever, that you're an installation at this organization, and it is part of the deal. It's not to sacrifice other parts of your personal or professional life. It's about contributing and getting the experience. And in most cases, they'll find someone else too.

Karl Sakas: They will. There's someone before you, there'll probably be someone after you. And thinking about the different moving parts, it's better if you compare. Hang in there and your heart's no longer in it versus stepping down and going out while you're doing a good job. I mean, it's better to take the old move and resign and let them find someone new.

There is a joke in volunteering that your number one job is to recruit your replacement. The idea is that, oh, if you don't have a replacement, you never get to leave. I wrote a succession planning and I'm just writing about succession planning in my upcoming 2025 book on leadership and management at agencies.

Succession planning is for any role, not just for you in your more senior type role, but anyone. Right? Thinking about say people going from project coordinator, project manager, beyond account coordinator to account manager, that kind of thing. It is going to be easier if you've been working on developing others, but it is up to the organization to figure that out.

Galen Low: Yeah. I had a boss who day one, he's your job is to make yourself redundant. I was like, that's very confusing. It's my first day on the job, but it was about that. It was about sort of, creating the structure to be able to pass the torch if you need to, because what you're doing now is important.

Someone's going to need to do it if you move on to do something else. So I do like that. And I think it ties into that sort of mentoring piece as well, where you could be volunteering and mentoring someone into the volunteer role that you're doing so that you could do a different role and, move on from that.

It's really cool. 

Karl Sakas: It was recently at my business fraternities every two year convention, and they have an event where people can share about their experience in the group, and I was encouraging the student members when they become alumni to volunteer. And I noted that one of the volunteers who later became president of the entire organization and the first female president of the whole group had said to me when I looked in New Jersey Karl, you'd be a great volunteer.

And she matched up something based on my interests and past experience. That was the perfect role. But as I, said in front of the students, I said, in retrospect, she probably said that to everyone. And it's funny. She was there and she was like, yes, I did. 

Galen Low: She nailed the pitch. 

Karl Sakas: It worked. Yeah. Yeah. 

Galen Low: I love that. 

I mean, maybe that's a good way to close this out. Because, volunteering, there's this sort of I don't know how to frame it, but like a vagueness around it, it's like a feeling of we should be doing it and it's not, but it's not baked into everyone's sort of career strategy or career journey, or even just life journey.

What do you think about volunteering? Should it be more normalized into the way we look at work, like paid work and career building? And yeah, if so, why? And if not, why not? 

Karl Sakas: I mean, I think if people are effectively forced to volunteer, that's not volunteering. That's as I would say, voluntold. But I do consider, for everyone listening, if you haven't been volunteering, or if you haven't volunteered in a while, maybe you did back school and, life's gotten in the way and things like that. You can start any time you want. And I would start by thinking of a cause that you care about, look for a local organization that focuses on that, go to the website and look into volunteer, see what they say.

If they don't seem to have any info about volunteering, don't seem interested in volunteers, look for another group and then reach out, see what the story is. If you don't like what you hear, try someone else. You don't have to go with the first one you find. But I would start by searching for organizations near you around a cause that you care about and check out their volunteer pitch.

Galen Low: I love that. I also love that notion that like volunteering is not this monolithic thing that you must do, otherwise you're a bad person. It's should be aligned with what you're interested in and it can take many shapes. 

Karl Sakas: Yes. And given that a lot of people aren't volunteering, for everyone listening, you're like, oh, should I do it? Probably you get to craft the experience however you want, and it'll give you a leg up. One, you may get some additional experiences beyond your paid work. I certainly have. That's been really helpful. And two, you're giving back. And three, it's nice to have something outside of work so that it's easy to get overly fixated on work.

That's the only thing you've got going, or it can sometimes feel like it helps to have the reality check of there are other priorities or other things going on. Work is important, but it's not the only thing. 

Galen Low: Boom. I think that sums it up. 

Karl, thank you so much for spending the time with me today, sharing about your volunteering story. This has been loads of fun. 

Karl Sakas: Thank you very much. 

Galen Low: Alright folks, there you have it. As always, if you'd like to join the conversation with over a thousand like-minded project management champions, come join our collective. Head on over to thedigitalprojectmanager.com/membership to learn more. And if you like what you heard today, please subscribe and stay in touch on thedigitalprojectmanager.com.

Until next time, thanks for listening.