Profession and Volunteerism, a guilty feeling?!

I always believe volunteering and giving back to the profession is a noble thing to do, and you and only you can find the right balance of how much to give back to the profession as a volunteer as it depends on so many personal factors.

Hello Gretta,
good question... I've been in such situation :-)

To me there are two values for good volunteers:

1) Honesty "We make commitments and promises, implied or explicit, in good faith"
I have seen several times fellow volunteers taking more activities on their plate than they can perform and sometimes saying "well, it's volunteering, I have my job to take care". That's not honesty and against our values

2) Responsibility "We fulfill the commitments that we undertake – we do what we say we will do"
That's important to make sure we deliver what we promise, but also won't damage the professional and personal commitment we took before or during our volunteering terms.

I never had issues because I volunteer at different organizations for one simple reason - I learn. Whenever I need to use examples, case studies, etc. I never use actual client information.

Volunteering is a good thing. Balancing can be a little bit challenging, though.

At the beginning was hard for me to combine both, because I was trying to be involved in more things that I could chew. Finding a right balance was key.

Contemporary question. In my opinion, the feeling of guilt comes in when we are not sure of the conflict of interest that may lie in. I think before we accept volunteerism, we need to be absolutely sure of the conflict of interest and also the time that can be given to these activities. This will allow you to focus on both as important tasks that are in your scope. Thx