Volunteering

While I am not privy to what motivates others to volunteer, there are a number of reasons I will contribute my time to an organization or cause.  Typically my reasons are threefold.  The first is a belief in the organization’s core values. I will volunteer to help raise awareness of their cause, helping to further their goals. Secondly, I like to volunteer as a method of giving back to a community, which has directly impacted or benefitted my life.  Lastly I have volunteered as an in-kind donation when I have lacked the funds to monetarily support the cause.

I routinely volunteer at aviation conventions for industry advocacy organizations.  Among others I am presently a member of Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), Experimental Aircraft Organization (EAA), Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals (OBAP). I have volunteered my time for these organizations at one time or another.

Founded in 1976, the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals encourages minorities to pursue aviation and aerospace careers. I have donated time to OBAP because they bring awareness of aviation as a career choice to inner city youth that prior to their introduction to the association may have not been considered.  OBAP offers summer camps for fourteen to eighteen year olds called ACE academies. Trips are organized which bring bus loads of students to United, JetBlue and Delta facilities in Chicago, New York, Orlando and Atlanta where they are introduced to dispatchers, pilots, mechanics, schedulers, and flight attendants. Tours though maintenance hangars and aircraft all culminate with a full motion aircraft simulator ride where they receive a lesson in operating a transport category jet aircraft. OBAP members presently employed by these contributing companies arrange all this, most of who will state that having someone introduce them to aviation as a youth helped drive them towards their career choice.  High school students are offered opportunities to compete for training scholarships to help defray the costs of certification.  I have volunteered at two of their conventions in Las Vegas and Chicago registering attendees and assisting with the administration of the events.

The Experimental Aircraft Organization was founded in 1953 out of the interest of amateur aircraft kit builders. Since then, the association has morphed into an amalgamation of all manners of aviation interests. Vintage, production, kit built, and aerobatic aircraft all have chapters within the EAA. Their annual convention is called Airventure Oshkosh and for one week a year Wittman Regional Airport becomes the busiest airport in the world.  Volunteering for the EAA at their “learn to fly discovery center” is essentially selling learning to fly to an interested audience at the world largest aviation event held in Wisconsin. As a licensed flight instructor, I among dozens of others, staff a sixteen hundred square foot tent answering questions about what is required to obtain a pilot certificate. We’re there to put a face on general aviation and let the nonflying public know that the little airport in their hometown is staffed with people similar to ourselves, who are approachable and would be very happy to introduce them to an activity that has changed our lives measurably.

My “In Kind donation” volunteering is usually for the AOPA where I have been a member since 1986.  The Aircraft Owners and Pilot Association is a Washington DC based organization that was founded in 1939 to represent the owners and operators of light aircraft in front of our national government. Essentially a lobbying entity, with an air safety foundation, their mission is to support “your freedom to fly”. When I owned a flight school I donated the use of one of our full motion flight simulators to their annual Aviation Summit in Hartford Connecticut. A three-day event we closed our business for a week while the simulator manufacturer packaged up our box and shipped it to the convention center. My wife and I worked the show for three days and we gave out thirty-six hours of simulator rides in six-minute intervals.  As I did not posses the financial wherewithal to contribute in a substantial matter, volunteering the assets of my business and services of my wife and myself was more than an adequate method of donating to the association.

There are many different ways to contribute to causes in our community, and the reasons people choose to validate their volunteerism are as varied as those who participate. I hope the aforementioned examples have detailed my motivation, providing a better understanding of just one person’s charitable giving.