When you think of volunteering, you may immediately picture lending a hand. While that is certainly true, volunteering is an activity that embodies so much more! When you volunteer for an organization, you’re contributing to building an entire community while enhancing your own professional growth.
There are many opportunities for medical communicators to get involved as volunteers. In this post, I’ll explore some of the benefits of volunteering for professional associations and how they can translate into professional settings.
Enhancing Organizational Skills
Balancing volunteering commitments with your professional responsibilities requires efficient organization and time management. You’ll handle multiple tasks, manage time consciously, and meet deadlines. As a volunteer for professional associations, you may be asked to organize events, which involves planning, scheduling, and team coordination. As medical writers, we may find ourselves taking on project management roles, making this kind of experience invaluable.
Developing Leadership Skills
As medical communicators, we may not be involved in leading a team unless we have a management position. Organizations such as the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) offer volunteer opportunities that help build leadership skills, particularly for those stepping into officer roles. This was certainly true for me when I was President of the AMWA Southwest Chapter. Holding that position allowed me to work on my ability to make decisions, oversee a team, and manage various activities.
Expanding Professional Networks
Engaging in volunteer activities allows us to connect and interact with diverse groups of people, helping us build valuable connections that can support us as we grow in our career. Last week, I talked about how networking can help us navigate changes in the industry, establish collaborations, and succeed as medical communicators. Volunteering is a much more relaxed approach to networking with other professionals!
Creating a Culture of Giving
No matter what position we hold, volunteering is a wonderful way of enhancing the growth of the medical writing community. By being part of an organization that offers education opportunities, empowers speakers, mentors early career professionals, and fosters diversity, we can set an important example of giving and collaboration and even contribute to meaningful changes.
In our recent free webinar, we discussed volunteering and several other ways to upskill in our field. If you were unable to attend, you can find the webinar recording on our website!
Want to learn more about professional associations and the volunteering opportunities they offer?
You can read our previous posts and learn more about the organizations that may fit your needs as a medical communicator and health or science writers. Many of these organizations are always looking for volunteers!
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