Lending a hand after retirement: volunteering in distant lands may be more satisfying than golf.

In his wildest fantasies of retirement, John Anderson never pictured himself crouched in a half-bow and clapping three times as he approached an African king with advice on tourism and economic development.

But Anderson, former chief executive of Enterprise Florida, a government and business partnership for economic growth, insists the joys greatly outweighed the surprises during his stint as a volunteer with the International Executive Service Corps. For more than 40 years, IESC has been functioning as a Peace Corps of sorts for ex-CEOs. It has offered its business acumen to help build economies from Bulgaria to Sri Lanka, and from Peru to Vietnam.

Anderson, who with his wife, Maggie, recently returned from an assignment in western Zambia, one of Africa's poorest countries, found the transition from the corporate world to volunteer work liberating. "It's great to be freed from multilevel, complex corporate governance structures and to deal directly with clients," he says. "Maggie and I both enjoy the hands-on nature and immediate impact. It's up close and personal, and you can see some results very quickly."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Their project in Zambia involved assessing the tourism potential of the kingdom of Barotseland, home of the Lozi people, and recommending an initial development plan to the king and his royal cabinet. Their first 10 days were spent doing "product assessment." That meant riding around in an open pickup truck normally used to transport bulls. (Maggie sat in the cabin up front.) Repeatedly, the truck crossed the great Zambezi River on pontoon ferries.

Sometimes, chief executives who volunteer find themselves on the periphery of geopolitical hot spots. Donald Van Stone, former CEO of First City Bancorp of Texas, last year carried out a two-week IESC assignment in Jordan, helping to teach a course to 14 Iraqi bankers who had traveled there by bus from cities such as Baghdad, Mosul and Tikrit. "The road goes right through Fallujah!" he says of the violence-torn city in central Iraq.

Van Stone feels gratified to have made "a contribution soon after arrival" that involved presenting "a career full of lessons in a few words and in a short time." His wide-ranging life experiences, from the Vietnam War to Harvard Business School and from bank CEO to high-ranking executive with MasterCard, gave him a broad perspective. "My career actually prepared me perfectly for this kind of work," he says. "We lived in nine countries during my 30-year career. I learned to hit the ground running, which is exactly what a volunteer must do. You can't take two weeks to get adjusted on a 14-day assignment."

IESC has been putting ex-CEOs like these to work overseas since its inception as one of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs. Started in 1964 by David Rockefeller, then chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, and Sol Linowitz, then chairman of Xerox, IESC has been led over the years by former chief executives of Lever Brothers, General Dynamics and Exxon. Ex-CEOs on the board of directors today include John Torell III, once chairman of Manufacturers Hanover Bank, and George Vojta, retired chairman of Bankers Trust.

IESC has managed 24,000 "volunteer interventions" in 120 countries and takes credit for creating more than a million new jobs, donating $800 million in services, and facilitating the purchase of more than $3 billion in U.S. goods and services by clients overseas. The program also proclaims that it spreads American values, such as democracy and the concepts of a market economy. The average age of volunteers is 60.

In addition to the IESC, there are a number of smaller, younger volunteer organizations. A year ago, IESC joined a consortium of 11 groups called Volunteers for Economic Growth Alliance. The others, however, draw largely on volunteer pools that include fewer retired CEOs and more middle- to senior-level executives in mid-career. Two such organizations include the Financial Services Volunteer Corps, which specializes in bankers, lawyers and regulators, and the Citizens Development Corps, which offers technical assistance to companies in emerging markets.

Through whichever channel a CEO chooses to volunteer, the advantage of having fixed-length assignments in retirement is that they put former executives on the ground solving problems, which in some ways is more satisfying than joining the management of a nonprofit or nongovernmental organization. Their bureaucracies and governance styles can prove frustrating to CEOs coming from the private sector.

Back in 1985, John Vogel, chief executive of Westminster Bank, was invited by Rockefeller himself to join IESC as vice president of finance. The first to computerize the organization's volunteer database, Vogel also opened 10 offices in Africa and the Middle East over the course of seven years. Then he and his wife, Helen, took one assignment every year, ranging from South America to Africa to Asia. One of those assignments involved living in an old factory in Bangladesh, showering with water from a barrel and offering his advice to a 750-bed hospital on how to stay solvent.

"Going on these assignments does not mean abandoning a spouse. Like the wives of many other CEO volunteers, Helen found ways of pitching in. While her husband reorganized and modernized commercial banks, Helen helped 16,000 Bangladeshi seamstresses find a way to export their wares, trained restaurant workers in Zambia, and worked in a clinic for single mothers in Peru.

One of the emerging trends in volunteering is that whole groups of executives are being dispatched, not just single volunteers, says Judith Halleran, IESC's senior vice president for communications. "We don't send volunteers out on one-on-one assignments anymore, because it's not cost effective," she says. "Now we run multiple tasks often involving five or six volunteers at a time." These groups sometimes compete against--and sometimes partner with--big consulting firms such as BearingPoint and Booz Allen Hamilton on large development projects."

Demand for Tech, Finance Skills

Another new trend is the emphasis on technology. IESC has added what it calls a Geekcorps, 2,500-strong, of volunteers specializing in IT-related assignments. Late last year, a new Financial Services division was launched. In all, 15 percent--more than 3,600--of IESC's 24,000 assignments have focused on the financial sector. They run the gamut from early development of a stock exchange in Taiwan to a recent project to denationalize the state pension system of Kazakhstan.

The recent stints of volunteer Bill Korstad, who retired in 2003 as CEO of Unitime Systems, based in Boulder, Colo., illustrate this new breed of assignment. Late last year, Korstad spent six weeks in Morocco helping two software companies make plans to expand abroad. "Retirement felt like a disappointingly premature termination of an activity I've always enjoyed," says Korstad, who volunteered in Hungary last year and Armenia in 2003. "The part of the workaday world I enjoyed most were the challenges where I had to use my skills and experience to solve new problems."

Korstad and other former CEOs say these projects helped them maintain a sense of involvement and even personal growth. "It presents the new challenge of working in cultures far different than my own, requiring considerable adaptation," says Korstad. "It's the experience of a lifetime to visit a country not as a tourist, but as part of the work world."

In some senses, each IESC project is "just another sale," Korstad notes. "You size up the customer, determine their needs, identify their sensitivities, and proceed to create and sell a solution that works in their environment. The cultures may be different, the customs unfamiliar, but people are pretty much the same the world over. They tend to be honest, hardworking, striving to make a better life for themselves and their families, proud of their culture and heritage, wanting respect, and above all, eager to learn."

Korstad says his biggest insight has been into the high esteem in which the citizens of emerging economies hold the United States, its people and even its government. "They see America as an honest broker that tirelessly helps the needy, asking nothing in return. It may sound corny, but it's true. Most people I've met are more pro-American than many of our own citizens. They've seen what tyranny does and are glad to see that we stand up to it. Corruption is strong in most places I've been, and people hate it. All they want is a level playing field where they can succeed or fail, based on their own efforts. They want it to be like the United States."

Back home, Korstad encounters lots of interest in volunteering, and he thinks many American business leaders underestimate the contributions they could make. "The needs abroad are so great, the pool of available talent in the United States so large, and the magnanimity of Americans so great," he says.

Ultimately, having a sense of mission is important to the types of people who have been CEOs. Many buy into IESC's stated goal of spreading American values. As Anderson puts it, "We always wanted to use our professional expertise to help developing countries and indigenous people build or strengthen their economies."

By spurring economic growth, their work creates trade opportunities for U.S. companies. "These projects create a lot of good will in the world towards America, and that's important," Korstad adds. "I'm a strong believer in our economic way of life and feel that it promotes democracy. It's what most people in the world want, and every small act helps advance that cause. My assistance not only helps small struggling companies in emerging economies but makes democracy a little bit stronger there. That's good for them, and it's good for us." A grand mission indeed.

RELATED ARTICLE: IF YOU Volunteer

TO BECOME a volunteer, visit these organizations' Web sites to check requirements, find answers to frequently asked questions, and send in applications. They require an active email address and an electronic version of a resume:

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

* International Executive Service Corps (IESC)

www.iesc.org

901 15th St., NW

Suite 1010

Washington, D.C. 20005

202-326-0280

email: [e-mail]

* Citizens Development Corps (CDC)

www.cdc.org

1726 M St., NW

Suite 1100

Washington, D.C. 20036

800-394-1945

email: [e-mail]

* Financial Services Volunteer Corps (FSVC)

www.fsvc.org

800 Third Ave.

11th Floor

New York, NY 10022

212-771-1400

email: [e-mail]