(FORTUNE Magazine) – Most of us have experienced pangs of conscience. We see refugees on television and sign a check. We drop a coin in a cup. We even volunteer a few hours at a soup kitchen and swear we'll do it again next month. Then next month comes, and there's a meeting or a party we can't miss. We want to do the right thing, but there's just not enough time. Indeed, in 1998, 56% of Americans volunteered time--up from 45% a decade earlier--but contributed less time on average than before. Then there are the few who shame the rest of us. They are busy. They are ambitious. But they don't miss their day at the soup kitchen. Here we tell the stories of two people who have made charity, doing good, making a difference--whatever you want to call it--a priority. The first, Lyle Hanna, found that his volunteer work for Habitat for Humanity boosted his career ambitions. The second, Tracy Weber, had a lot to unlearn when she gave up a career at Microsoft to work at a nonprofit.

Blending Career and Calling

Lyle Hanna's epiphany came--get this--as he was sitting on a mountaintop. Hanna, his wife, and their son, and about 100 other volunteers for Habitat for Humanity had driven the final nails into new houses for three Maori families on New Zealand's eastern coast. It was New Year's Eve, and after celebrating they ascended the mountain to wait for daylight.

That's when Hanna, 46, got to thinking. A successful human resources consultant for William M. Mercer in Louisville, Hanna enjoyed his work but was beginning to feel limited. Working with Habitat, Hanna had traveled from Ghana to Guatemala. As chair of the charity's global committee, he was organizing projects in 68 countries and building relationships with business executives around the world. At Mercer, however, he was still driving the same old route from Louisville to Cincinnati to Lexington.

As the sun crept over the horizon, Hanna began to envision a new path for his career. He'd worked internationally for Habitat; why couldn't he do it for Mercer too? Soon he was planning how he could sell the idea to his boss.

Hanna has always been open about his commitment to Habitat, which builds houses for low-income people willing to contribute several hundred hours of "sweat equity"--plaques honoring his work for the charity adorn his office in Louisville, and he has organized co-workers to work on Habitat builds. Since 1987, Hanna has become president of the local affiliate, created a statewide organization in Kentucky, and joined the international board.

In a way, doing good is in his blood--he once considered following his grandfather and father into the Presbyterian ministry. He's soft-spoken and cheerful, with a gift for putting people at ease, a trait that has been useful to him both as a consultant and as a Habitat fundraiser. Underneath this good-natured demeanor, though, lies a determined will. Diagnosed with dyslexia in grade school, the 10-year-old Hanna insisted on riding a bus for an hour every afternoon to get extra tutoring. In high school he was president of the student council and every other club he joined. All of which helps to explain his frenetic schedule; he has been working 50 or more hours a week at Mercer while overseeing plans for Habitat's global 25th-anniversary celebration. "I don't have time to do both, actually," he says, "but I do both anyway."

Doing more of both things was what Hanna had in mind in March when he approached his boss, Mercer vice chair Timothy Lynch, and told him what he'd been contemplating on the mountain--that he had the experience and connections to work for Mercer on a global scale, and that at the same time he wanted to increase his profile with Habitat. Lynch didn't hesitate. "He said, 'Great, let's take a run at it,'" recalls Hanna.

Lynch was willing to let Hanna take that leap not just because Hanna had the talent, and not just because he'd never let Habitat get in the way of his work, though both those things were true. More important, Lynch saw that working with Habitat could actually make Hanna better at his job.

Fast-forward to this fall. One day in October, Hanna found himself driving around Lexington when he was supposed to be in Katmandu on a vacation helping out on a Habitat build ("All my vacations are Habitat trips"). But a last-minute call from a client, Charles Thiemann, the president of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Cincinnati, had kept him home. The bank's board meeting had been rescheduled, and Thiemann needed Hanna to give a presentation. Hanna knew he had to delay the trip a few days, rebook his flights, and deal with it. "The point is that Mercer comes first," he says.

But here's the kicker: Hanna had met Thiemann, a fellow board member, while fundraising for Habitat, and later brought him in as a client for Mercer. This is exactly the kind of synergy Hanna hoped to leverage globally.

Hanna has no doubts about his decision. He has launched into his new business development job for Mercer's offices around the world. While in India at a Habitat board meeting in October, he took time out to help the head of Mercer's Indian operations. On the way home he stopped in England for work and was able to make some new contacts for Habitat. Then, in November, he got a commitment from Mercer's board in New York to spend $200,000 to sponsor Habitat nationally. All in all, Hanna believes that his volunteer work and career have never gone better together. "I'm psyched," he says. "In London I had to add pages to my passport. I realized that I've traveled a long way the past few years."

--Brian O'Keefe

Not Missing Microsoft

By the fourth meeting, Tracy Weber was fed up. It had been a month, and still no decision had been made. In the back of her mind were other little irritations brought on by the penny-pinching economies of her new employer, a nonprofit called Centerpoint: She had to buy her own scissors and stapler; she had to use a paper punch because three-hole-punch paper was too expensive. But making decisions was the worst of it. Weber had come from Microsoft, where a decision like this would have taken an hour, tops. C'mon, she thought, was all this research and talk really necessary? The task at hand: picking a Website address.

"At the end, I was like, 'Please! Could we just get past this?'" she says.

This was not exactly what Weber, 36, had pictured in August when she left her job as a group manager at Microsoft to take a job at Centerpoint, a Seattle nonprofit that helps people going through career crises. The transition has been loaded with little shocks, like the fact that her Microsoft pay was bigger than Centerpoint's entire $190,000 annual budget. But in one fundamental way--and this is what allows Weber to dismiss the frustrations of working for a cash-strapped volunteer organization--the job meets her expectations exactly: "The money I make now, I couldn't live on," she says, "but I feel a joy I haven't felt in a long time."

Weber started looking for something more meaningful in her life after she was raped at knifepoint seven years ago. That trauma steered her to Centerpoint, where she took a course called Passion Search to help her focus on finding meaning and fulfillment in work. She took a position at Microsoft managing techies who did troubleshooting for big corporate clients, thinking it was the answer. Even though she was successful, rising to the position of group manager and overseeing 150 employees, she didn't feel satisfied. "If the purpose of my life is making money for a large corporation," she says, "that's just not enough." The day she quit, Centerpoint offered her the job of managing director.

There are similarities between the old job and the new one, but the transition hasn't been easy. For one thing, she now earns $24,000 a year, although thanks to her husband's income and the stock she accumulated in her four years at Microsoft, money is the least of it. More difficult was learning that being a boss at Centerpoint doesn't mean you can act like one. Weber recalls an early meeting on Centerpoint's marketing strategy where she announced--in her change-on-a-dime Microsoft style--that all business cards, fliers, and promotional materials needed to be redone. After a sticky silence, the executive director suggested that they take the tasks on one at a time. Later the executive director told Weber that those materials had been produced by the volunteers at the meeting; Weber hadn't really considered their other jobs and responsibilities.

That experience taught Weber that she had to start thinking differently. "I don't give direct orders. I ask for help and ask people to make decisions with me," she says. "The being real aggressive and assertive sides that worked at Microsoft had to go."

She has also had to learn new ways to marshal funds. To get money for her group at Microsoft, she made noise in budget meetings. At Centerpoint she has to make countless phone calls, asking people to open their checkbooks. "I was in a yoga class recently, and this woman who works at a technology company was saying how guilty she felt about how much money she was making," Weber recalls. "So I hit her up for 200 bucks."

One skill she developed at Microsoft that has served Weber well in the non-profit world is the ability to multitask. Where once she kept track of 150 employees and their myriad clients and projects, she now directs ad strategy, buys office equipment, manages volunteers, and acts as chief financial officer. Most important, she feels that her work helps people change their lives for the better. If that means suffering through a few agonizing decision-making sessions, so be it. As for Centerpoint's Website address, the group finally settled on centerpointonline.org. Now, was that so hard?

--Theodore Spencer

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