Ethical Concerns in Volunteer Mediations: One Woman's Fight Against the Exploitation of a Non-Commercial Space

Occasionally, I am honored to serve as a volunteer for Community Boards, the nonprofit organization where I did my initial 40 hour mediation training.

There are many things to love about Community Boards, but perhaps the most beloved aspect of their mediation model lies in their volunteers. They train ordinary community members to mediate neighborhood disputes, regardless of the volunteers' professional background. As a result, many San Francisco neighborhoods have benefited from Community Boards mediations, which resolve a wide range of conflicts. Through their volunteer program, I have mediated landlord tenant issues, noise disputes, family concerns, planning commission hearings, and many other types of conflict. The city uses them on a regular basis to resolve conflicts that would otherwise clog our agencies and courts.

However, when I serve as a volunteer mediator, I leave my own private practice out of the mediation room. I feel very strongly that a Community Boards mediation is not the place to engage in marketing for my own business; rather, I am there as a representative of the nonprofit, and nothing more. While I can tell you that not every mediator feels similarly, for myself this is the only ethical option. I was a mediator in a case where one of the other panelists told me he planned to give his business cards to the parties before the mediation, and that I should feel free to do the same. When I told the other panelist I found this inappropriate something unexpected happened. He thanked me for keeping him honest. Neither one of us distributed our cards. The lesson to be learned? I'm not sure that there is one, except maybe to listen to your internal moral compass. Others might appreciate your integrity, but that's really besides the point - the impetus in my decision was the parties, and their comfort level. In the end, we provided a mediation that was focussed on the issues before us, rather than our self-promotion. And that, to me, was really the point.