Making Time in Your Project to Volunteer

Elizabeth is a freelance writer and project manager living and working in London. She runs The Otobos Group, a project communications consultancy specializing in project management.

  Career Development   Diversity   Organizational Culture  

Philanthropy is great on paper, but when you are up against tight deadlines it can be hard to think about when you and your project team can actually make some time to volunteer your services. Between project meetings, completing deliverables and keeping stakeholders happy, there’s not often time to take on anything else. And as the project manager, it’s probably going to be down to you to do all the liaising with the organization you are volunteering for and then scheduling the time to make it happen with your project team. How can you fit it all in?

Finding time in your project schedule
A while ago, my company was looking for volunteers to support community projects and my team decided to sign up for the initiative. We worked with the scheme organizers and were allocated a piece of work--decorating a children’s centre near the office. It was used by disabled children and their carers during the week and was looking a bit tatty. Another group was assigned to revamp the garden, and we were tasked with painting the interior.

There were several rooms to do and a lot of window frames (which was my job). Having 25 people on site made it easy to make progress quickly, and although we left while the paint was still wet, in a day we managed to get it all done--and no impact on our business project at all.

The organization we were working with made it…

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