What else we can do during the service?

An idea of mine in my mind which has settled for long time was am I going to make a difference to the place I am working at. For me I need a motivation to push me doing that, and for the most of the times, the push always base on my self-interest. I was working for Disney about 7 months in Orlando. And I was thinking a lot about how to make a difference during the work. The reason was it is good for me. If I work hard, I got recognized. If I go above beyond, I got nice tips. If I do something other people wouldn’t do, I got more training and more responsibility. If I achieve something other people are not able to think of, I got promotion. That is life and that is how to deal with work in a company. Reality is brutal. But the rules of game can’t not be more crystal. And a lot of time you need to be able to defend your interest in order to grow.

However, non-profit organization is a totally different place. During the service, I was provided a lot of information and enormous opportunities. I could choose what I want to do and what I like to do. This is totally different compared with some corporations. We do have a big platform to perform. But I need motivations. Where are my motivations? I do have lots of good ideas about the work place, and I could provide some extra service to make the organization better. Furthermore, I do have lots of opportunities. But I am reluctant to implement those ideas. There is no good reason for me to do that, or is it?

I was telling myself is there no reason for me to do better and extra service here really. The non-profit organizations have some similar problems like low retentions and hard to motivate staff. If there motivation system of the organization is not sophisticated, probably this is the place we can star working on to make a difference.

What is more, people always reject to do something is based on the consideration instead of the difficulties. Lots of thing we could improve are not hard at all. Bring some batteries to recharge the clock on the wall which says the time is 11/12/2011 is a difficult thing. The difficult part is how to change the way we are thinking.

After several services done, I realize it is time to summarize this special experience involved with the communities. I started contacting the different organizations right after the class and few of them actually responded right away. And one of them was the International Center located on campus to serve the international community including residences, students, workers and other people as well as assist those groups to get involved in the West Lafayette.
Like any other non-profit organizations, International Center (IC) displayed enough courtesy and friendless. Volunteers are from all parts of the world which shows diversity of cultures, and so are the activities and events. But like other non-profit organizations, the weakness of IC is compelling and reluctant to remove. During the first several services, as a new volunteer, I don’t have enough clues to understand the goal of the organization, the agenda, and the process of the operations. And it is confusing and difficult to figure all those out by myself. Since it is a non-profit organization, HR and its functions are being underestimated which is not supposed to happen.
Proper training for new service workers is essential. There will always be a problem to keep retention in high rate in non-profit organizations.  People need to have clear goals and direction to start the work instead of wasting organizations’ resource with low productivity.