Advisor Today > > August 2001: Viewpoint

Viewpoint: The Value of Volunteering

Serving is inevitably a personal growth opportunity

Dennis R. Merideth, CLU, ChFC, NAIFA president

As I near the end of my term as NAIFA president, I find myself reflecting upon close to 30 years of service to our organization. As we look to the future, and particularly to local, state and national leadership, I think we must do a much better job of selling the personal gain and growth to be achieved by serving on a NAIFA board.

The challenges of volunteering

While there are no absolutes, almost every survey tells us young people generally are motivated by different factors than those that prompted many of our older members to serve. While loyalty, an eagerness to do the right thing and camaraderie were once motives for volunteering, the same might not hold true for our new generation of potential volunteers, and particularly potential NAIFA leaders.

Addressing the problem

In our quest for tomorrow's leaders, we must address head-on the "what's in it for me" concern, and therein lies our challenge, as well as our opportunity. Whenever anyone's asked to serve, it's natural to look only at the one negative side of volunteering, which is the time commitment involved. We can counteract that natural reluctance by selling association involvement as an investment of time that yields some very important dividends. More often than not, we forget to emphasize these side benefits when approaching members-and particularly young members-to serve. These are the side benefits of board service that answer the unwilling participant's question: "What's in it for me?"

The path to personal growth

If more people realize that undertaking leadership roles is really a personal growth opportunity, we would have members knocking down our doors to serve! Perhaps we veteran leaders have forgotten that most of us learned how a board functioned through NAIFA board service at the local level. We learned committee structure and board organization, became familiar users of Roberts' Rules of Order and honed our public speaking skills through our service.

Some of our members then graduated from Leadership 101 (local board service) and went on to sharpen their skills even more by taking Leadership 202 (state board service). Regardless of the motive, NAIFA volunteers get a great education in communication and organization, and with the exception of the time involved, it's all free of charge!

Other benefits

Now here's the amazing personal-growth, career-changing fact we've forgotten. These volunteers then took the skills they learned through NAIFA service back into their communities and put them to use on other boards in areas where they live. Maybe it was for a charity, a church group, a service club or a homeowners group. They were then able to use the skills and knowledge they had learned on our boards to stand out as people of value and welcome participants in any organization they chose to serve.

What is most important, they've positioned themselves as professional agents or advisors to do business with. There's the connection, and there's the answer to the "what's in it for me" question.

There's no way you can serve on a board in our organization and not end up growing professionally. This will absolutely and positively help you build your business and be more successful in the process.

This is the story that we must be telling our members. Once this story is understood, they should be standing in line to volunteer to serve on our boards and work with various committees. But they won't understand it if we don't tell them. Of course, there will always be those who will do it because it's the way you give back to our industry, and I firmly believe that "volunteering is the rent we pay for the space we occupy on this earth."

Whatever the motivation, I strongly urge you not only to pay your dues, but also to get involved. The ultimate payback is the relationships you will build by working with other professionals toward a common cause.

I sincerely promise you that your life and career will never be the same again.

Dennis R. Merideth, CLU, ChFC, represents Principal Financial Group in Tucson, Ariz. He is president of NAIFA.

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