Monday Matters: Small Does Not Mean Amateur

At least once a month, I sit down with my Google Calendar and make a list of everywhere I have committed to be and every webinar, meeting, event, or other obligation I have committed to attend for the coming month.

Then I send that list to a couple of people whose lives are considerably easier if they know what is going on in mine. That way, we can plan around it.

I wish I could tell you I had reached peak organization and that my calendar was beautifully color-coded according to organization, purpose, and degree of urgency.

Alas, it is not.

But to say my calendar for the coming month has a pronounced lack of what good designers call "white space" would be an understatement.

Looking at it recently, I was struck by something else: a full calendar does not necessarily equal a healthy bank account.

In my case, a substantial portion of those meetings, events, webinars, deadlines, and obligations represent things I have volunteered to do. That's not a complaint. I chose them. I care about the organizations and causes involved; I believe the work matters, and I get a great deal of personal satisfaction from doing it.

But there is something about seeing all those hours laid out in little boxes on a calendar that makes the value, and the cost, of volunteer labor remarkably visible, and it made me think about something we don't discuss nearly enough.

Volunteer work is incredibly valuable to the people who benefit from it. To people who don't, it can look remarkably valueless.

Spend 20 hours writing a grant that brings $25,000 into a small nonprofit, and the organization understands exactly what those 20 hours accomplished. The people who ultimately benefit from the funded program may never know your name, but their lives may be different because you spent those hours doing the work.

At home, however, those same 20 hours may simply look like 20 hours you weren't available. 

That's not necessarily because the people in our lives are selfish, unsupportive, or don't care about our communities. They're experiencing a different side of the equation. They're the person waiting for you to finish something so you can have dinner. The friend hearing, "I can't. I have a board meeting," again. The family member wondering why you're answering emails on Sunday afternoon. The partner looking at household expenses while you're sitting at a computer doing work that would command a respectable salary if somebody were paying you to do it.

And eventually somebody asks the inevitable question: Why are you doing all of this for free?

It's a fair question. It's also a question that gets at a much larger problem facing small and midsize nonprofits. Somewhere along the way, we decided that a nonprofit with a small budget should also have small expectations, except, strangely enough, nobody lowered them.

Small and midsize nonprofits are expected to have pristine financials, compelling marketing, diversified revenue, measurable outcomes, accessible communications, engaged boards, strong governance, strategic plans, cybersecurity, succession plans, innovative programming and, naturally, a steady stream of successful grant applications.

And a remarkable amount of that work is being done by volunteers. Not amateur work, busywork, or the proverbial stuffing of envelopes. Professional-caliber work performed by people who aren't being paid to perform it.

We love volunteerism in the abstract. We celebrate giving back. Companies put community service in their value statements. Nonprofits hold volunteer appreciation events. Communities give out awards.

But sustained volunteerism doesn't usually look like the stock photo.

It looks like Tuesday-night meetings. Sunday-afternoon emails. Grant deadlines. Budgets. Driving somewhere when you're already tired. Solving problems you didn't create. Learning systems you never expected to learn. Missing something you'd rather be doing because something you've committed to needs to get done.

And perhaps most dangerously, being good at it.

Because nothing attracts unpaid work quite like demonstrating that you're very good at unpaid work.

Competence has a way of becoming its own punishment in the nonprofit world. The person who gets things done gets asked to do more things. The volunteer who always shows up becomes the person everyone assumes will show up. The person who can write the grant, fix the problem, run the campaign, or organize the event becomes indispensable.

Until they can't, as even the most stalwart volunteer has limits.

There is a human cost to volunteer labor that doesn't appear on a nonprofit's Form 990. There are hours away from family and friends. Lost weekends. Interrupted dinners. Mental bandwidth. Relationship strain. Professional opportunities postponed or declined. And sometimes the uncomfortable realization that something you love doing is asking more of you than you can sustainably give.

That doesn't mean the work isn't worth doing. It means we need to stop pretending that because someone's labor is freely given, it costs nothing. 

And small nonprofits have responsibilities here, too.

We have to respect volunteers' time. We have to distribute work instead of continually rewarding competence with additional responsibility. We have to build systems that don't depend upon one heroic person holding everything together. We have to create succession plans, honor boundaries, and recognize professional expertise even when we're fortunate enough to receive it without an invoice attached.

Most importantly, we need to remember that gratitude is not the same thing as sustainability.

"Thank you" matters. So does making sure the person you're thanking still has a life when the meeting ends.

Small does not mean amateur.

But neither should small mean building an organization on the assumption that talented people will indefinitely donate professional-caliber labor simply because they care.

They may care enormously, believe in the mission with every fiber of their being, and they may know that programs, organizations, and opportunities exist because they helped make them possible.

And they may still occasionally sit at the kitchen table, look at the calendar, look at everything else waiting for their attention, and ask themselves the same question everyone else has asked:

Why am I doing all of this for free?

Every committed volunteer needs an answer to that question, and every nonprofit that depends upon them should care enough to respond.