Article and photo by Adrianne Harris, Broadly Speaking
Why should you volunteer for your professional association when you already work many hours each week, keep up to date by reading relevant information and participate in online forums and groups? Why should you bother to give away your services and skills for free to a bunch of people that ask you to pay a membership fee every year?
These are good questions to ask yourself before you volunteer to assist your professional association. It’s easy to pay your fees, add the relevant initials to your signature and appear to be a fully engaged professional. However, it’s harder to engage with your association in a way that will assist your career and help you grow and find the right job. Volunteering is one way of actively getting involved.
There are a few great reasons for choosing to volunteer for your professional association:
- You may not get the chance to use certain skills that you have in your current job, you can keep these skills current and continue to develop them by volunteering to assist where you know these skills are needed or you will have a chance to develop those skills
- You might want to build a professional reputation outside of your organisation. This can help with getting new jobs or building your network. Think strategically about what sort of professional reputation you want and then volunteer for the activities and committees that will help grow that reputation. Are you wanting to be a leader, a team player, a coach, a trainer, an industry expert, a master networker? Find opportunities that match that aim – speak at a conference, chair a committee, write a review paper, write a guest blog, there are many possibilities to position yourself in your industry.
- You can try things out – if you haven’t done a particular activity (for example managing a project, speaking in front of a group, writing content) then you can have a go through your association. It often comes with less risk than if you were doing it for the first time in your paid job and you often have support for the association in order for you to succeed. You generally won’t be performance reviewed on your participation and your confidence can grow knowing you are learning in a safe space surrounded by supportive colleagues in the industry.
You might volunteer to:
- Help organise an event
- Help organise a conference (part of a team or as a convenor)
- Attend an event and strategically network by assisting the organisers
- Give a talk, presentation or workshop
- Chair a committee
- Take minutes of committee meetings
- Organise meetings and key note speakers
- Write articles for your association magazine
- Mentor a younger member
- Take part in a mentoring scheme yourself
As you can see, those are just a few suggestions to get you started thinking about why you should be involved. To avoid burnout and resentment towards your association, consider strategically what you want to get out of the engagement, then you can say “yes” to the opportunities that will excite you and help further your career and you can say “no” to activities that are just a drain on your time and energy.
How do I know which Professional Association is right for me?
It might surprise you to learn that there are more than 100 relevant associations in Australia. Some of them are listed here. The other ways to find out which association is right for you is to ask other in the industry and to read some job ads where sometimes these details are listed. Memberships are generally available for different levels, from student to experienced practitioner and usually have different levels of benefits depending on their structure.