Since I was 8 years old and helped my mom collect dimes door-to-door in our neighborhood for polio, I have been a volunteer, but until a few years ago, I never spent too much time thinking about why I volunteered. Many of you are volunteers as well, and in fact, many of you were volunteers who worked with me or are in a role where you work with volunteers.

For many years I lived a dual life. I was the executive director of a non-profit that depended on volunteers for leadership and support. At the same time, I was a volunteer for other organizations. This dual role enabled me to keep one foot on each side of the fence, if you will. I believe it made me both a better leader of volunteers, as well as a volunteer leader.

This is a story of my re-engagement with Phi Sigma Kappa Fraternity as an adult volunteer Advisor, and what I've learned and understand about volunteerism.

Several years ago, one of the best volunteer leaders for the organization I directed, a member of the Board of Directors who lived in my town, invited me in for a couple of glasses of Pinot Noir after I dropped off a notebook he had left at a recent meeting. 

I’m sure we covered a lot of topics in that two-glass shoot-the-breeze hour, but the one thing I remember about our conversation is that he asked me about my volunteer service as the Advisor to my fraternity’s chapter at the University of Massachusetts. (Note: he had attended more than one social event at that same fraternity when he was younger because one of his good friends went to school at UMass). 

I told him what was going on, how well the organization was doing and so forth. He then asked me a very unusual question: ‘Ed, why do you volunteer?’ Kind of a curveball, coming from a volunteer to the executive director of an organization he volunteered for, eh? Without thinking too much I simply said “I like the way it makes me feel. I like being part of the solution.” He said ‘Me, too.” 

And that really summarizes the core concept of volunteerism. Sure, volunteers volunteer to make a difference, but there is something in it for them as well. It is how volunteering makes them, us, you feel. One of the best feelings we can have is being part of the solution, isn’t it? 

Organizations that depend on volunteers are among the strongest and/or the most fragile, and their position on that scale is directly related to one single thing in my experience. That one thing is the level of volunteer commitment. 

In my professional career, I spent much time and energy working to figure out or learn why people gave up their own ‘time, treasure, and talent’ in pursuit of the mission of the organization. It didn’t take a genius to realize that the stronger the commitment, the more time, treasure, and talent a volunteer leader provided to the organization.

I spent almost no time analyzing why I was giving time, treasure, and talent to the groups I volunteered to serve. I might have been too busy to think about such deep questions, or I might have felt ‘obligated’, or I might have blindly followed my instincts.

If you volunteer, you can probably relate to these concepts: your commitment to the organization impacts the time, treasure, and talent you provide them with, but you might not think too often or too much about why you are doing what you are doing.

Since the national Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity was founded at UMass (then called Massachusetts Agricultural College), and the chapter house was built with alumni donations and has been operating since 1914, and there is a shrine to the founding on campus, and one of the early Presidents of the college was one of the fraternity's founders, there is a lot of history and lots of reasons for the organization to thrive as a member of the campus community

I joined Phi Sigma Kappa Fraternity as a freshman, well before the movie 'Animal House' degraded the image of the fraternity experience.

Personally, I gained a lot from my undergraduate fraternity experience including lifelong friendships. When I was an undergraduate member, I started to learn how to get along with people, I started to learn how to lead, and contrary to the stereotype some have, I learned how to engage with a diverse population. Oh yeah, I also met my wife through the fraternity, (she was introduced to me by my ‘Big Brother.’)

Nothing about the revival of the fraternity was easy, quick or without pain. But the Time, Treasure and Talent we poured into the task was rewarded as things began to turn around. Additionally, the way we felt during the successes of the turnaround kept us engaged and helped us get others engaged

Membership grew from about a dozen and half men and a half full facility, to 116 members and a waiting list to move in. That process was accompanied by several major national and university awards.

We started attracting a very high caliber of students to join, and the undergraduate leaders did the 'heavy lifting' so to speak in the re-emergence of Phi Sig. Some outstanding young men made the difference as the fraternity trajectory changed, and those guys are now 'alumni' and continue to make a difference.

The volunteers leaders helped, and helped specifically with direction, but it was the Brothers who made the fraternity a good place to associate with, a good place to live, and a good place to learn about success habits.

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