Israel

When a volunteer walks through a manager’s door, each volunteer brings along a whole system of expectations, wishes and demands associated with the volunteer experience. Volunteer managers often recognize one category of expectations as the “fantasy world” of the volunteer. These expectations are frequently hidden from the volunteer manager and often only exist subconsciously for the volunteer.  While the volunteer’s altruistic motives are most important in the first stages of recruiting and integrating the volunteer, the volunteer’s fantasies are most likely to surface during the actual volunteer experience. During this stage, if these additional hidden needs of the volunteer are not fulfilled, the altruistic motives that the volunteer previously declared will gradually erode, often causing the volunteer to drop out early on.

In this e-Volunteerism feature story, we review how these fantasy concepts challenge volunteer managers and discuss why it’s important to understand the nature of volunteer fantasies. Ultimately, volunteer managers who learn to manage these conditions help influence the management practices of the entire organization – for the better.

Yad Sarah is an Israeli nationwide network of volunteers aiding needy, disabled and elderly people. The organization relies on volunteers and provides many essential services which are not covered by the government, such as lending medical equipment, day rehabilitation centers, transportation for the disabled and geriatric dental services.  Through Yad Sarah, professional dentists in Jerusalem volunteer to serve the underprivileged elderly, an act of volunteering that expresses social solidarity and willingness to contribute.

Avraham Zini and Harold D. Sgan-Cohen, two leading dental experts in Jerusalem, decided to explore ways to improve the satisfaction among volunteer dentists – for the benefit of the health care providers and the community recipients. Towards this goal, they surveyed 67 dentists currently volunteering on a regular basis at the Yad Sarah geriatric dental clinic in Jerusalem.  In this feature story, e-Volunteerism presents the results of Zini and Sgan-Cohen’s research, outlining the main reasons that lead Israeli dentists to volunteer. Their article reviews the aspects of dental volunteering efforts that fulfilled expectations, and which areas proved less than satisfactory. This important research provides a unique look inside a volunteer experience that is rarely made available to the public.