What motivates people to do good? To participate in charity work and volunteer their time, effort, skills, money for others? Why some do volunteer work continuously, and some don’t? Summer heat and great weather has kept me in the water for most of the week. So in between swim, windsurfing and wondering in the forest I have been thinking of motivation to do good.

Are some people born with need to do good?

As a club’s president I am very eager to understand what motivates people to be active in volunteer work and charity. How to bring more satisfaction to my club team members, so they would feel good about effort they put in our club. Hmmm… And how we could engage more people who are interested in both: sports and charity for our cause. When I run into TED talk by Abigail Marsh on LinkedIn about why some people are more altruistic (https://www.ted.com/talks/abigail_marsh_why_some_people_are_more_altruistic_than_others) I wondered if this really comes down to anatomy…

There must be more than anatomy

I am sure research done by Abigail Marsh is important – yes, some of us are having more active and larger amygdala. There are people who will naturally look for ways to do good. So there is group of people who will naturally be tending to do good. I believe there are also few more groups of people.

I think people who have suffered themselves are more likely to help others. Interesting that it is not people who has more help more. The harder the life gets, the more likely people will join effort to help ones in need. Compassion drives people to help.
Few times I have read articles on volunteer work helping to improve life quality of person doing charity. (You can read one of such articles on https://www.helpguide.org/articles/healthy-living/volunteering-and-its-surprising-benefits.htm). To help people who feel depressed or anxiety it is recommended to do few hours of volunteer work a week.
Also in some cases people find giving as a pennants for their lives: something they have got, or something they have done. It is probably coming from some religions where people are told to give up 10% from earnings to ”keep good luck” on their side.

In any case it feels good to do good. It helps receiver, as well as giver no matter what is their motivation.

Opportunity to do good

I believe giving opportunity to serve and bringing meaning to people’s actions is important task of club like LC Stamina. Our members are just like any other person who just want to do good. As a president I need to not only focus on how to help ones in need, but how to enable more people who want to help. I guess neither of these tasks is more important than the other at the end. So next question is how to bring opportunities for people who want to do good to connect to ones in need for good.

Understanding what motivates people to do good is going to be critical to bring LC Stamina forward. To understand what motivates my club members I plan to sent out survey to them. But I am still left with questions – how I can bring opportunity to join our cause for those who are not in our club yet? If any ideas – let me know: kristine.savolainen@gmail.com. I will be happy for any comments and ideas on this topic.

I will keep contemplating this topic in between my swims and wind surfing. Have an active week ahead and stay safe!
Kristine