Advocates of increased civic involvement by young people would do well to expand the definition of the word “volunteer,” writes Janis Foster of Grassroots Grantmakers, in a posting on her
Big Thinking on Small Grants blog.

Ms. Foster, writing in response to a post by Robert Thalhimer on the blog PhilanthroMedia, comments that “the word ‘volunteer’ has become somewhat of a trigger for me.”

Volunteering, she says, has come to be laden with feelings of guilt (“that I’m not volunteering enough or I’m not willing to volunteer whenever I’m asked or that I have not enjoyed some volunteering that I have done) and has become synonymous with the concept of work without pay.

“To men, volunteering also suggests a selfless quality; when you are volunteering, you are working without pay and without personal benefit or gain except the good feeling that comes with doing good,” she writes. “You are selflessly working for someone else — to advance some one’s agenda or to help someone else in need.”

But volunteering for the betterment of one’s own neighborhood, Ms. Foster writes, should more accurately be described as “citizenship.” “ I was involved because it was my responsibility to be involved and because there were consequences if I didn’t fulfill these responsibilities,” she writes. “I was not being selfless; I was working from self-interest.”

An “expanded vocabulary” to describe such involvement, she writes, might be useful to people :who want to engage young people in civic engagement — making it easier for us to let young people know that it’s okay for self-interest to enter the picture. That working from self-interest may be where they find the passion that propels them forward.”

Does the nonprofit world need to do a better job of talking about volunteerism, and connect it more closely to citizenship and self-interest? Click on the “comments” link below to offer your thoughts.