Happy vs Unhappy People Who Volunteer

My friend and I were walking with our dogs and talking about life.  She chairs a fund raising event that has run annually for thirteen years and raises over $50,000 each year.  She has been very successful at running this two day event.

We were talking about what makes people join groups and volunteer.  Her experience over the years is that people are happy to volunteer and help with an event when the end goal helps a lot of people and when the event is fun to participate in.  She says that she has been very lucky to have strong volunteers that are generous with their time and that have great ideas and throw their whole effort into being part of the event.

Recently, however, some of her staunch volunteers have had to pull back because of ill health or simply ageing and not able to do the level of energy that is required.  She has taken on new volunteers.  Some of these volunteers, she says, are simply unhappy all the time.  They find fault with the event.  They find fault with new ideas.  They say that they are happy to help and yet they do not want to put a lot of effort into their volunteer-ship. They complain about the timing of the event, the length of time it runs, about the customers that come (and spend a LOT of money), and about the venue.  She says that these folk are simply unhappy with life and want to take their unhappiness out on her and the others that love the event.  She finally suggested that they may not want to volunteer at the event since it did not meet their standards.  Then these folk were incensed that she suggest that they were not good enough to help out!  

Our discussion was around how she could meet the requirements of these six volunteers.  My thought was that you cannot make unhappy people happy because happiness is not a validation that comes from outside of people - it comes from the inside - from the enjoyment and self satisfaction of life in general and doing things that makes the person feel happy inside.  It is a losing battle to try to please an unhappy person.  My suggestion was to give each of them a very limited role that did not touch on too many other people because an unhappy person will work to make everyone unhappy.

My friend reworked a schedule around that idea and parsed them out so that none of the six worked at the same time or in the same group.  She met with them individually and walked though what was expected for their short volunteer time.  She said it worked to minimize the problems.  She expects to have another successful event.

Many blessings,

Judy