The Art of Volunteering

Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-Raheem

I want you to think about family. You can start with your own and then move outward.

What is a family? Or rather, a healthy and successful family ?

A stereotypical family is a set of adults, who decide to get together, have kids, and raise them to see them happy. A successful family puts other thoughts into the mix for lasting results.

This type of family starts to define some of the following things:

• Values that will help run the family;
• Goals they create based on those values;
• How to achieve balance and maintain it;
• Relationship management;
• Financial structure required to meet their goals;
• Health management;
• Dealing with challenges;
• External influences etc.

If a family doesn’t start with defining their values and goals (mission and vision) then they are already on uneven and shaky ground. You will see an increase of such families around you if you pay close attention.

Now reflect about your own family. Based on the years of experience you have in ‘being part of’ a family or ‘running a family’ you will come up with how you see your family being run.

In a family, parents are people that bring a couple of decades of experience before their children are born. They pick and choose from what their own parents did and what they learnt to do or not to do and implement their version of it in their own household. In the best of structures, everyone knows their role, work with each other with a great attitude and in times of conflict know what steps to take to resolve it so that they can move on without the family breaking. With age and experience, these adults also grow as people and become wiser.

Until the age of 12, children look up to their parents, are happy with them and go along with what is taught – with minor disagreements as the child asserts his or her ‘ego’ or personality into the discussion. Relationships with the children are of a good natured one and the only thing that keeps parents stressed is the amount of work that needs to go into raising them since they are not physically independent and require parents to do everything.

The teenage years brings about sudden change – and if one was not prepared for this change, then there are arguments, bad behavior, disappointments, and frustrations that start to arise. Time and patience is required to understand the child becoming an adult.

When these teenagers are in university as young adults, they now feel they are in a ‘new and modern’ world where the information, values and ways of running life of their parents is outdated. Even religion, the way it was practiced at home, becomes insufficient. Arrogance sets in and parents are left being hurt often with the attitude of the children they worked so hard to raise. Their children forget what went into raising them, don’t seek advice as often, if at all and can do what they want. If the parents are wise and patient, they don’t let anger take control of their pain. They are disappointed, yet hopeful because of the groundwork they did.

These young adults then go into the real world and look for jobs, spouses and opportunities. They then experience true results that arise based on the type of attitude they carry.

• Are they the kind of person that thinks that all failure is the result of the fault, biases etc. of ‘others’? ‘I am not hired because I am brown, wear a hijab, don’t have a degree from an IV league, my parents didn’t let me move away otherwise….etc ‘

• Or do they complain about everything, never really changing the way they themselves are doing things? ‘my boss hates me, my colleague is so cunning she just sucks up to management, my bus is always late so I never make it to the morning meeting on time, etc.’

• Or do they see their success as their own gift to the world, often hurling out humbleness and humility in the process?

• You will often see the ones who are also lazy and miss opportunities in life because of that, or too sensitive, or too angry.

• No doubt there are those that are balanced, understand the people around them, take time to work on themselves and hold themselves accountable for everything and often are grateful and satisfied with life.

What kind of person are you?

What happens next after they start work?

They get married and decide ‘their’ way of doing things will be so much better than their parents – until they become parents of teenagers. That is when they start seeing the challenges their own parents went through. They are closer to 40 by now – when wisdom usually should be setting in if you are on the right path.

If parents are alive, their attitude softens towards them, and they are more humble and caring. They are now the ‘sandwich generation’ and realize this is why they saw faults in their parents, because now they see their own faults as they juggle children, spouse, in laws, old parents, other relationships, jobs, household management and possibly health issues.

And a new cycle begins.

Why did I make you read all this?

Because an organization is built in a similar way, especially a charity or non-profit.

Money must be raised for a For-profit business and for a Not-for-profit business.

But just like you can’t run a family like you would a corporation built on profitability -for that would take out the human element and make things very cold – you can’t take out the human element of values, goals and intentions in a non-profit. That is why the government also has different rules and regulations for non-profits.

• In a for-profit, the board is a shareholder of profits.
• In a non-profit, the board is responsible for the way things are run legally, financially and must raise funds and network to make sure the work is progressing without obstacles.
• A for-profit focuses on maximum financial gain through their work.
• A non-profit focuses on maximum impact of their work which requires finances along with volunteers, vision, mission, set values.

A Muslim charity must be even more diligent in their values, intentions and goals and keep renewing them as an organization to keep track of their path and not stray from it.

This Muslim charity must run like a family to keep the human element of love, care, respect, brother/sisterhood and patience. A Muslim charity that focuses on ‘followers’, ‘popularity’ etc to gage their success and self-worth will fall into the trap of Shaitan. Following the example of Prophet Nuh (one of top 5 prophets), this charity must know WHY they are doing this work and let the results stay in Allah’s hands. Allah tells the Prophet (pbuh) to not get sad that people don’t listen to him. He tells him that his role is to deliver the message and not to change the hearts of people.

Just like the best of families – the best non-profits keeps things God-centric and this keeps them going for the goal that is bigger than themselves. They are not self-serving, having a bigger and holistic vision in mind instead.

Just like youth in a family like to look at other families and think theirs is not the normal one, other families are more normal, until they get married, have their own family, experience other families and realize theirs was just as normal, if not better, than other families – similarly people in an organization can have that ‘grass is greener on the other side’ outlook until they get to the other side.

When we take God out of the main picture – we leave the door open for Shaitan – and he is only there to create fights, disagreements, chaos. Just like we see and hear of many organizations that may have started with the right intentions but are now having tussles and wars within themselves.

No matter where you are in your role in the family: child, teen, young adult, or adult – know your place, be respectful of those above and below you, be patient and humble yourself, continuously learning and seeking advice. At every stage, you need to pull your weight, care for those that may not be able to do so realizing that you might be strong enough to take on more burden than your peer and help them along the way as well.

Don’t be that child that just compares themselves to their sibling and thinks life is unfair because the parents do more for the sibling who gets away with doing less where you are left standing with doing more.

If you keep your intentions God-centric and know that it is His pleasure that you seek then you will be able to realize that what you have been given is in accordance with what you can handle and to give you the opportunity to gain more rewards. Nothing happens by chance. You are presented opportunities by God. It’s your choice to see if you will make the most out of them, or be the person that loses out by walking out, looking for green pastures elsewhere.

If you are not the person that can be part of the family with the same values, then you will end up disrupting it – just like a bad apple can ruin the entire crop. Know yourself and see ‘why’ you are part of a non-profit. If you joined as a volunteer then your ‘why’ is very important since you don’t have financial gains. Even if your gain is self-centered in any other way, a non-profit that is built on a cause must have people who believe in it’s cause otherwise they will be a burden to the organization.

My advice to anyone who is part of any family is to practice Allah’s advice in Surah Al-Asr:

We are in loss with the passage of Time – unless we stand firmly on our faith, continue to do good, while guiding others and themselves to the truth (lesson of our deen) and guide others to patience when it is most needed – for those that do good keep facing hurdles and obstructions from Shaitan and only those firm and strong in their faith are mindful of that and only those will succeed.