Are You Ready for More?

Why You Should Get Involved in Your Community

BY MATT MCDERMOTT

It’s understandable if you feel too overloaded to consider volunteering. The first few years in real estate can be hectic and command much of your attention. But you should consider the potential benefits of volunteering. Getting involved in your community can be very rewarding by giving you opportunities to network with other real estate professionals, build relationships in your local business community, make contact with potential clients, and find an avenue to express yourself outside of work.

Read about REALTOR® Magazine’s Good Neighbor Awards to learn more about some very inspirational work being done by your fellow practitioners around the country and how you can get involved.

How to Get Started

Your first step is to discover an area of service that you find fulfilling. It may not be what you originally expected. Some people start working with the elderly only to switch to assisting poor families or the homeless, while others work with children or the disabled.

Many volunteer organizations hold one-off events such as fundraisers, field trips, or building renovation projects that only require a one-day commitment. These are good opportunities to see if you are well matched to both the organization that’s involved and the people it serves.

Once you determine how you want to get involved in your community—perhaps by tutoring a new immigrant in English, being a mentor, or delivering meals to local elderly citizens—make sure you don’t overestimate the time you have to offer.

“Start small,” says Gil Gillenwater, a 2000 Good Neighbor Awards winner. “Don't take on too much at once or you'll burn out.”

During these first years in your career, don’t worry about the amount of time you volunteer. People will be impressed more by your consistency rather than the volume of your aspirations. Real estate is local, so the totality of your actions in the community will contribute to your reputation as a reliable businessperson and citizen.

The Benefits of Volunteering

• Community involvement establishes that you care about your town and its residents. They will see you as more than just a service provider. “If you're bold enough to volunteer, then you'll be bold enough to knock on the person’s door again in the future and see how your neighbor is doing,” says James Pacheco, a 2003 Good Neighbor Awards winner. The same people skills that help the less fortunate in your town are those that you use to sell a house.

• Volunteering puts you in contact with other community-minded people, who are often the movers and shakers in a town. They aren’t simply future clients, but people who can teach you the crucial business issues impacting the community (e.g., employment issues, zoning issues, etc.).

• You'll benefit from whatever free publicity the group receives in newspapers and other media. Also, these experiences can offer you the opportunity to learn skills to work with press releases and handle telephone calls or can entail public speaking opportunities with local media. This is practical experience for your real estate career.

• You'll feel great about yourself. Many of REALTOR® Magazine’s Good Neighbor Awards winners cite their community service work as a major source of stress relief and personal pride. “When I lay down each night, I truly know I’ve made a difference,” says 2000 Good Neighbor Awards winner Oral Lee Brown, who adopted a classroom of inner-city children and made sure they'd have the opportunity to attend college. “I know at least one of those kids wouldn't have made it without me."
  
  An Avenue for Professional Growth

You will learn a variety of skills while volunteering that will benefit you on the job as well.

• Communication Skills. Community service can bring you into contact with people from a much more diverse background than you are used to. Greater ease in interacting with a wide range of people will make you faster on your feet in your work with homebuyers and sellers.

• Ethics. Volunteering makes you more attentive to the interests of others and putting their needs before your own, which are the principles enshrined in the REALTORS®’ Code of Ethics. Your reputation will grow as a person who can be trusted in business.

• Negotiating. You may find that fund-raising is an area that appeals to you. For example, running a fund-raising event requires you to get other volunteers to participate as well as convince local businesses to donate raffle prizes, food, or event space. These efforts test and build the same abilities required to carry your sales though to closing.

• Organization. Some Good Neighbor Awards winners put their efforts into organizing charitable activities that come to bear fruit on a single day. James H. Bess Sr., a 2003 Good Neighbor Awards winner, founded and runs the Victor Valley Toys for Tots Inc., a charity that has distributed more than 100,000 toys to 53,410 children since 1988. While his distribution for the charity occurs during the Christmas holidays, his organization requires long-term planning. So will your career: in prospecting, commission projections, budgeting, referrals, education, and niche marketing.

• Time Management. Real estate is not a 9-to-5 job in a stationary office. The successful real estate practitioner must balance a variety of tasks: open houses, listing presentations, viewings, offer presentations, inspections, and closings, as well as juggle office-based tasks, such as organizing marketing campaigns, meeting clients, and handling paperwork. Many practitioners say that perseverance in scheduling community service has helped them learn to juggle their overall business commitments.

By volunteering, you’re contributing to the livability of your community. In the end, your clients, like you, will have made the choice of whether or not to live there based on its desirability as a place to call home. Claudia Deprez, a 2003 Good Neighbor Awards winner, did just that by being a driving force behind a neighborhood improvement association. By reducing street crime, rehabbing buildings, and engaging in other physical improvements, the residents have not only improved their quality of life, they increased area property values by 69 percent in 2002 alone.

“I used to think of my business as a practice,” Deprez says. “Now I think of it as a mission, and I feel I’m very close to being able to say, ‘Mission accomplished.’”