How volunteering changed how I view work ethic

When I was young, I always figured that I would be motivated purely by monetary rewards. I thought that any passion for a job that I had would be because of the financial success it would bring me. This is just how the society around me treated work; as a means to more money.

Since then, I’ve spent a lot of my time on a quite popular pastime: volunteering. I did this as a part of the Boy Scouts, at a nonprofit called Clothed by Faith, and as a member of the Order of the Arrow.

Every Boy Scout volunteers. It is woven into the structure of requirements and ranks. To rank up your overall status in Scouting, you must complete a minimum of 18 service hours of volunteering. 3 of these must be conservation-related. Citizenship in the Community, a required merit badge, has a volunteering requirement. Volunteer projects are often organized on campouts, like trash cleanup or trail rebuilding. One of the final Boy Scout requirements, the Eagle Project, is heavily centered around volunteering your time and other Scouts’ time to completing a task. As an Eagle Scout, I’ve done all of this and more.

Next, I volunteered some of my free time at an organization called Clothed by Faith. This nonprofit essentially focuses on receiving, folding, and sorting donated clothing. It is then sent to local families in need. The time that I spent here was separate from Boy Scouts; it was not required.

A more unique example of volunteering would be my induction into the Order of the Arrow. This group is an offshoot of the Boy Scouts. To become a member, I had to be elected by my troop and attend the Ordeal.

The Ordeal was the event that changed how I viewed the volunteer experience I already had. It was essentially a full day of manual labor with no talking, minimal food, and strict rule enforcement. The focus was on silent, thankless work. It didn’t matter how much you did, or how much harder you worked than your neighbor. There was always more to do, and it would be done in silence.

Now from the outside, this sounds like torture. “Why would anyone voluntarily do this?” you might be asking. Well, most Scouts don’t. Of the around two dozen Scouts elected, only three others attended this Ordeal with me. “Order of the Arrow member” is quite an exclusive title in the Boy Scouts.

But to someone like me who has volunteered similarly in the past, this sounded like a fantastic challenge before I aged out of the Boy Scouts. I wanted to prove that I could complete a difficult task without a reward. Silent, thankless, hard work.

Because in the past, I was always motivated by something secondary. I volunteered in the Boy Scouts to get some badge; I volunteered at Clothed by Faith to get service hours. Volunteering wasn’t so much giving as it was a trade.

And this is what I learned about volunteering from the Ordeal. How to rewire my brain to appreciate the work not just for the reward that comes after. Now, when I volunteer, I’m doing it for what was originally the intended purpose: generosity.

So when in any future career, I plan to export this idea in the same way. Instead of being motivated purely by money (like I used to think I would), I’ll work for the intended purpose of my work.