From Corporate IT to Meaningful Impact | Finding Purpose Through Volunteering | by Gaurav Mittal | Inspiring Story #229

Before volunteering, my world was built on targets and timelines. For nearly twenty years, I worked in IT, solving problems, managing data, and building systems that kept businesses running. I was good at it, but somewhere along the way, I stopped feeling the human side of my work.

Success Without Meaning

There were nights I’d close another project, hit the milestones, deliver the metrics, and yet feel nothing. I’d walk out of the office, lights glaring over rows of empty desks, wondering what it was all for. My work made big companies more efficient. But who was I really helping?  It didn’t make me feel alive. Success had become routine, predictable, empty.

I wanted to feel excited, to see my skills matter in a way that went beyond deadlines and reports. I didn’t know what I was looking for, only that something was missing. So when I came across an email about skills-based volunteering, it caught my attention.

When I first heard about it, I hesitated. Part of me wanted to help, but another part doubted, You don’t belong there. Nonprofits were fighting poverty, saving lives, educating children. I was behind a screen, writing code. How could that help? More than once, I hovered over the “withdraw” button, thinking someone else could do it better.

Still, something nudged me to say yes.

Finding Purpose Through Volunteering

My first project was with a small health foundation in East Africa. They needed a simple way to track their outreach work.  I spent weeks building an automated dashboard, wondering if they’d be able to use it.

Then came the day of the call. I was sitting in my home office, hands sweaty as I waited for the video to connect. The director’s face appeared on screen. My stomach twisted; I’d managed big systems before, but this felt different.

“Ready to see it?” I asked, probably sounding more nervous than I wanted to.

The dashboard came to life, colours, graphs, and numbers shifting across the screen. She leaned forward, eyes wide.

“Do you know what this means for us?” she said, her voice full of excitement. “Now we can show donors exactly what we’re doing. This could change everything.”

I just sat there for a moment, letting it sink in. All the doubt I’d carried melted away. I’d solved plenty of problems in my career, but I’d never felt that kind of impact before.

A New Measure of Success

Later that night, after closing my laptop, I realised something. All those years of code, data, and deadlines.  All the work I’d once thought of as routine, had led me here. Every skill I’d learned, every late-night solving problems, had been preparing me to help in this way.

I’d spent decades building systems for efficiency. Now, I was building something that gave people strength,  something that kept hope alive, and made real impact.

That moment changed how I see my work and my purpose.

Since then, I’ve continued to volunteer and mentor others, but it’s no longer just about efficiency or metrics. Technology matters most when it makes a difference in someone’s life. It’s about meaning, about using our skills to create something that helps, and gives hope.

If you’ve ever wondered whether your skills could really make a difference, take this as your sign: they can. The tools you already have, the experience, the insight, the care, might be exactly what someone’s waiting for.