Today’s post comes from Michael Nealis, Interactive Strategy Coordinator for Points of Light Institute.

A reader mentioned this commercial in the comments for a post that asked, “Can A Spontaneous Mob of Strangers Change The World?” a few days ago, and it’s been rolling around in my head since then.

It’s a great way to show the power of technology to bring people together for a common cause and how you can use technology to make an impact on your community.

From a volunteerism standpoint the commercial has some great, albeit unspoken, messages.  What might be the most important message is that in order to get people to come together to change their community, you need to ask them.  If you don’t ask, they won’t know that they’re needed.

When you’re asking someone to volunteer, you need to go to where the people are, whether it’s on Facebook, your local volunteer center, or a community center.  The young adult in the commercial uses his phone to go to Facebook, where he can leverage the network he already has and share information with them about his idea.

We get to see the results of his efforts, too.  Not only does he get a group of people together to change an abandoned lot into a space that the community can use, we get to see what the results of their action is.  This is another important aspect of a volunteer project.  Volunteers that work on small parts of a project may not get to directly see the results of the work that they do.  It’s important to seek them out at different stages of the project that they’ve worked on to show them the results of the work that they’ve done, and how it’s contributed to the completion of the project.

There’s a question about whether events like the one in the commercial, groups of people spontaneously coming together to do a service project is beneficial.  I’ve talked with people who have said that if the volunteers don’t have a connection to the community, or if they’re doing it for themselves to boost their egos rather than out of a sense of altruism or community good, then it’s not really volunteering.  Volunteering is serious business.

I don’t agree with the people that say these things.  Volunteering can be serious business, but it can be full of laughter and excitement and fun, too.  All it takes is one event for people to start to grow a connection to service.  That first time volunteering because a friend asks you to, or that first project that you planned because you saw a community need that needed to be addressed, really lowers the bar to a continued life of service.

One shot and “volunteer mob” events are a great way for people to test the waters of volunteering.  The bar for entry at these types of events tend to be very low, and if it gives them an opportunity to connect to a cause and have fun while doing it, it makes the bar for entry to continuing to volunteer lower.

Besides, who am I to judge how people get involved in serving their communities?  I know that I didn’t start because service was an important part of my life, I kind of just stumbled into service.

Do you remember the first time you volunteered and how it influenced you to keep volunteering?  Have you ever participated in a spontaneous “volunteer mob” event like the one in the commercial?  Let me know in the comments section!