President Column (61) 1: The Power of Volunteering within Our Profession

I was participating in a Department Chairs meeting within my college a few months back when we came to the topic of finding external reviewers for promotion and tenure candidates. For those who might be unfamiliar with this process, in most universities when a faculty member goes up for promotion and/or tenure, the department chair is tasked with finding typically three to five individuals (the exact number depends on the university’s policies) who are external to the university who will review the candidate’s file and write a letter evaluating performance based on general standards for the discipline. A typical review requires maybe three to four hours to examine the material and then two to three hours to write the report. Performing a review is a behind-the-scenes thankless job, but the process is critical given that department chairs may have little knowledge about what counts as high quality research in subdisciplines that differ from their own.

As chairs, we were sharing tips for finding reviewers when the conversation turned to many lamenting on how difficult and time-consuming identifying willing individuals can actually be. One chair shared how he had contacted 10 different people and still none had said yes. Another chair shared how in a previous year he had found three people who agreed to do a review, but then only one ever turned in a report. After several similar experiences were shared, a chair hopelessly commented that “the age of volunteering (aka, doing work for free) is dead.”

Unfortunately, in recent years I have seen several other examples supporting this chair’s assertion. As a past associate editor for a journal and a guest editor for a special issue in another journal, I remember spending more time trying to find people to agree to perform ad hoc reviews than I ever did reviewing the submissions myself. This is a sentiment that I have heard many other editors and associate editors of journals also express. In several different professional and personal organizations, when I have sought individuals to serve on committees, often spots remain unfilled because there are very few who are willing to help. And, in many different capacities, when I have been searching for people to provide brief educational presentations, often one of the first questions that is typically asked is “how much will I get paid?”

How the “free work” of Others has Benefited My Career

Contrast these experiences with some earlier events that have shaped who I am as a professional today. When I first told my parents that I was thinking about majoring in psychology, they had no idea how to respond. My dad was an engineer and my mom’s background was in accounting – I didn’t even know that psychology was a discipline or that people had jobs as therapists and counselors until I got to college. Although my parents couldn’t help, they did know someone who could – Dr. Yamada, a licensed psychologist who lived just around the corner. Dr. Yamada freely gave of his time over the course of several years to help teach me about the profession and give me career advice. I can confidently say that I would not have gotten into grad school if it were not for his guidance and help. As another example, in my third year of graduate school, my advisor recommended that I submit a recent paper that I had written (a meta-analysis on preference accommodation) to a Division 29 graduate student paper award. My response – “sure, but what is Division 29?” A few months after submitting my paper, I got an email from Dr. Jeffrey Barnett. As a member of the review committee, he was writing to inform me that my paper had been selected for the Donald K. Freedheim Student Paper Award. When I showed up to the awards ceremony, Dr. Barnett introduced himself, welcomed me to the Division, and started introducing me to others. In particular, when he introduced me to Dr. John Norcross, he described my paper and told Dr. Norcross he had to read it. This led to an invitation to co-author a chapter on preferences in the second edition of the Psychotherapy Relationships That Work. Up until that point I had been planning on a very different career than the one I have today, but the fact that Dr. Barnett freely volunteered his time to be on the awards committee and then to make me feel welcome at the APA convention, led to my passion and identity as a psychotherapy researcher and opened doors for the client preference research that I have conducted for the past almost 20 years. Dr. Norcross also shows up in my third example. I had been nominated to become a fellow of Division 29, but now I needed to identify three existing fellows who would write letters of recommendation to APA for this honor. Without hesitation, Dr. Norcross agreed to be one of them. A few weeks later, when I saw the letter he had written, I was very touched. It was clear that he had put a significant amount of time and energy into the thoughts that he put down on paper – a sacrifice that he freely made. When I expressed my gratitude the next time I saw him, he shared that he was happy to do it, and only asked that I do the same for someone else in the future. These are just three of hundreds of times when someone has performed “free work” that has had a direct benefit for me and my career.

Reasons to Volunteer within the Profession

Our profession needs volunteers! Let me share four different benefits that come when we perform “free work” within the profession.

First, our volunteering honors the free work that was performed by those who came before us. Based on the past experiences that I have described, what kind of message would it send to Dr. Yamada, Dr. Barnett, or Dr. Norcross if I now, at this stage in my career, refused to mentor a younger person, declined to review award or grant submissions to the division, or decided not to write a fellow recommendation for a deserving individual. Or what would they think if I only agreed to do these things if I was paid a fee. Even if you have not experienced direct benefits of others volunteering like the examples I have provided, the discipline that we are all in today is at least partially built from the free work of others, including those who have for free reviewed journal articles, served in professional organizations, lobbied with legislators, and provided brief trainings and workshops, to name a few. We have a duty to those who came before us to continue their legacy.

Second, others need our free help. As professionals, we enjoy a high level of privilege. Others are not as fortunate. This is perhaps one of the reasons why the American Psychological Association Ethics Code suggests that we do at least some work pro bono (Principle B: Fidelity and Responsibility). Imagine a couple different scenarios. In the small town that I live in, we send our third- and fourth-year grad students out into community sites to get broad clinical training and experiences. Licensed providers at these sites give up billable hours to supervise and train them for free. What if they all decided they were only going to supervise if the students or the university paid them. Our university doesn’t have any money to do that and our students definitely don’t. As a result, our students would only be able to get limited training in our one department clinic, and even then, our five clinical faculty can only do so much. We would have to reduce our admissions to just one student a year, thus limiting the opportunities for many to enter the profession. As another example, our Society’s journal receives about 250 submissions a year. Each article gets reviewed by two or three individuals who do this work for free. What if they all decided that they wanted to be paid for that work. Given the amount of time it takes to complete a review and the going hourly rate for psychologists, a change to paid reviews would completely wipe out all income that the journal makes for the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy. We would either have to discontinue the journal (removing a valuable publication outlet for researchers and a valuable science base for both researchers and those in practice), or start charging authors for their submissions (disadvantaging researchers who are early in their career, who do not have major grant funding, who do not have jobs in well-funded universities, and those in practice who conduct research). We need to provide opportunities to those who come after us.

Third, our professional organization can have the greatest impact when people volunteer. As President, I spend several hours every month working on Society initiatives and carrying out necessary tasks for our organization to function. It might seem fair for me to request say a $5,000 or $10,000 stipend in recognition for that work. That would be much less than the amount of money I would make if I was seeing clients or doing consulting work for an equivalent amount of time. But that money would have to come from somewhere. Perhaps we give out one or two less Gelso Grants each year or we cancel our AMPD scholars program. I would get financially recognized for the work I do, but our field would suffer because we get one or two less scientific discovery from the Gelso Grants or two less minority voices from the AMPD scholars program in future leadership positions. There are models to pay people for their work, but they come at a cost to our discipline. An excellent volunteer that I know is Dr. Kendra Westerhaus. She is a practicing psychologist in my community who was recently recognized with the American Psychological Association Karl F. Heiser Presidential Award for Advocacy. Every year she volunteers countless hours to state and federal advocacy efforts. Her efforts, paired with the efforts of others like her, have played import roles in several pieces of Idaho legislation, including PsyPACT participation, prescription privileges, and service extender roles. These benefits would not have happened if she had not stepped up and volunteered.

Last, volunteering creates a community and a sense of belonging (Dallimore et al., 2018; Jenkinson et al., 2013). For the past 15 years, I have been a reviewer for our Society’s journal – Psychotherapy. I feel a connection to this journal and its success because of the volunteering that I do. I also frequently review for awards, grants, and conference presentations within the Society and have been on several different committees. Many of the close professional relationships that I currently have, came out of the volunteer work that I have done with others. While it was wonderful to get an award from Division 29 early in my career, it has been my free involvement over the years that has made the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy a professional home for me. In addition, research has illustrated that when we volunteer, we feel happier, have greater life satisfaction, and experience an increase in well-being as a result (Curry et al., 2018; Jenkinson et al., 2013). Personally, I often provide both paid and unpaid workshops on topics such as premature termination, student self-care, and working with client preferences. I ask for pay when the organization putting on the workshop charges attendees or makes money from my presentation in some way. However, when the organization does not experience a financial benefit, then I offer my services for free. Although the content of the workshops is the same whether or not I get paid, I often finish the paid workshops feeling drained and overworked; whereas I leave the volunteered ones feeling happy and satisfied with the contribution that I gave.

Conclusion

Our field as a whole and our professional organization in particular needs volunteers. Please join us in doing this important work. There are opportunities to mentor a student, present a webinar for free, review grant and award submissions, help out with committee initiatives, and more. Through these efforts you can give back, pass on, advance the profession, and join a community. If you are willing, we could use your help. If you would like more information on a volunteer opportunity within the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, please contact me at Joshua.Keith.Swift@gmail.com.