I shouldn't admit this, but I contacted HelpArgentina more to help myself than to help Argentines. I was looking for a chance to use my Spanish and meet people. A year and a half later, I'd say that why one seeks volunteer work is the least important part of it. It's what you make of your experience once you're in it that matters.
I was matched up with a small NGO that promotes environmental consciousness and self-reliance by helping build school vegetable gardens in the poorer outskirts of Greater Buenos Aires. Like all not-for-profits, they wanted help with fundraising (which is to say, with marketing themselves). Since I have an MBA in marketing and work in advertising, it seemed like a good fit.
But the initial excitement of meeting new people and speaking Spanish quickly faded when I realized there was no specific project for me to work on, no set schedule, not even a place for me to work. And that's when I learned Important Volunteer Lesson #1: I had to take the initiative. No one was going to hold my hand and tell me what to do or how to do it.
What I proposed for the organization was a marketing and strategy analysis of the type I used to work on for clients like Proctor & Gamble. While the two founders of the foundation, agronomists by trade, had lots of ideas, what they didn't have was the time or resources needed to make them happen. They needed a plan if they were going to grow. And the first step in planning is looking at the world you operate in and deciding how you fit it-what do we offer that others don't, how can we best deliver that service, etc.? The goal, as I saw it, was to be able to confidently answer the key question in the mind of potential donors: who are you, and why should I give you money?
Unfortunately, that's not how the two agronomists saw it. Busy with running the foundation day-to-day, I think they found my attempts at long-term strategizing interesting, but a diversion from what really matters: making contact with people who might prove helpful. What matters is relationships, one of them told me-not marketing reports.
And that's when I learned Important Volunteer Lesson #2: don't expect everyone to share your goals. I was used to dealing with professional marketing types. The founders of the organization were entrepreneurs, used to action more than analysis. The challenge became to convince them of the usefulness of the project itself.
I did other projects along the way, important things like a big grant application and smaller projects like translations. But I felt I had to prove myself with this marketing work. Just as I began to feel like a failure, providence intervened in the form of a marketing professor at the Universidad de Torcuato de Tella (and a friend of the sister of one of the founders-"it's all about who you know," I was told again.) Jaquie not only imposed discipline on the process and asked good questions, she gave me a meaningful role to play for the next 5 months: guide a group of her graduate students in a semester-long marketing analysis of the foundation. I would write up a proposal for their project and guide them along the way, and at the end of the term they would present their findings and recommendations to the foundation and their professors. Finally, I'd be able to prove to the organization that all this stuff I'd been going on about-this "marketing"-matters!
And you know, I think I've finally begun to see his point. After all, my grand plans for the organization haven't really materialized. But rather than change the organization, I've been changed myself. I've become much more flexible in how I work with others and approach challenges. And for that, I have my new relationships to thank.
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