Tech & Social Impact: Why should we volunteer?
This is the first in a series of posts about how folks who work in tech can be superheroes of social impact in their own backyards - wherever that might be, no matter how busy they are, and no matter their specific skills.
In this post, we look at why we should care about volunteering.
In 2015, one in four people in the U.S. volunteered for a total of 8 billion hours, which was valued at an estimated $184 billion in output (source).
That might seem like a lot, but it still means 75% of Americans didn't volunteer in all of 2015 - and the government's criterion for being counted only requires someone to have volunteered a single hour all year. Sooo .... yeah.
And it's not because there's no demand. Cursory searches of volunteer-matching sites show that, similarly to the demand for paid tech work, there's a large need for skilled tech volunteers. But why should we talk time out of our busy lives to give something away for free?
It turns out, there are multiple excellent reasons to volunteer that have little to do with making the broader world a better place. Let's look at four of them.
1. Volunteers make more money.
Turns out, folks who regularly volunteer make more money than those who don't.
According to Psychology Today, it’s because of what are called “weak ties." Strong ties refer to people you know well - think your family members, friends, colleagues - with whom you likely share similar viewpoints and have access to similar resources and information.
Weak ties, on the other hand, refer to people you know tangentially; think the fellow parent you occasionally run into at school events, or the developer you sometimes chat with at the local JavaScript meetup.
The argument goes that weak ties are actually much more influential on your life than strong ties, because they're your connection to a plethora of larger networks and resources, and in turn, provide access to new information, ideas, and career opportunities.
In particular, Granovetter showed that people with weak ties not only find jobs that the rest of the tight network cannot see, but those jobs come with higher compensation and satisfaction. This is especially true for higher-educated workers, like your typical engineer. Because more than 40 percent of jobs are found through referrals, understanding weak ties is an important factor for both job seekers and recruiters.
Volunteering is an excellent way to build those weak ties, as we'll discuss a bit further down. (In fact, the next two reasons to volunteer both contribute to increased income.)
2. Volunteering can level up your career.
Fun fact: 82% of people with direct or indirect hiring influence want to see skills-based volunteering on resumes, and even more (85%) say if they see volunteering, they're more willing to overlook resume "flaws" (source).
How many people actually include volunteering on their resumes, though?
A mere 30%.
Recently, I volunteered for a local tech interview practice session at a nearby university, and multiple students told me they were advised to leave volunteering off their resumes to create more room for (often subpar or tangential) technical experience. Based on the data above, that seems misguided.
Why do companies value volunteering so highly?
Between 80% and 92% of hiring folks said volunteers were more likely than non-volunteers to possess the following (respectively):
- communication skills
- strong character traits
- accountability and commitment
- leadership skills
- broad professional skill sets
3. Volunteers build wider and stronger personal communities.
We hear all the time in tech that "we are not our users." We're likely to be much whiter, wealthier, more educated and more male. A great way to combat that homogeneity?
Volunteer!
(I mean, come on, that was a gimme.)
Just through my volunteer work at a local development bootcamp run by the YWCA, I've gotten to know a whole slew of people with experiences I hadn't directly encountered much before (if ever), including single parents, refugees, folks with chronic illness, middle-aged people who'd rarely used computers, and so much more.
These connections - this community-building - is not only important for point No. 1 (expanding your weak ties) but also for increasing your awareness of experiences outside your own.
Volunteers themselves agree - 79% of volunteers who responded to the National Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating (NSGVP) said their volunteer work helped them:
- understand people better
- motivate others
- deal with difficult situations