Thoughts on community service

[eirias]

I'm a member of a national service fraternity. We're a bunch of more-or-less privileged undergrads and grad students who team up to do things for other people, typically at no cost. I've spent the last year helping the group at UW to get its charter back, after having lost it sometime around 1977. It's been quite educational - I now have a lot of appreciation for what our founders at CWRU did back in 1992. One of the things that surprised me was how difficult it was at first to find service projects to do, especially on campus. It seemed that everything we could volunteer to do, someone was already getting paid to do.

In a recent chapter meeting, we had a guest speaker who offered us a fundraising opportunity - we would play waitstaff at parties nearby for a few hours, and they would pay us a certain amount per hour. After she left we had some discussion about this, and one of our members mentioned that he felt uncomfortable with the idea. He pointed out that if we took this work, we would be keeping this company from hiring people who needed work; and that, as non-employees, they would not need to pay payroll taxes or Social Security taxes for us; and that this was probably the reason for them to seek us out.

This got me thinking. By performing this service for money, yes, we would be helping a corporate entity to get by without hiring real workers. But can't the same be said of all the service we do? Well, okay, perhaps not all - surely if the local Alzheimer's Association didn't have our help blowing up balloons for a party, for instance, they would simply have gone without the balloons. But that sort of safeguard doesn't apply to the more essential service projects APO does - organizing food pantries, cleaning up local public areas, building houses for low-income families. These organizations we work with all have paid employees. Every dollar we save them is a dollar that doesn't go to a worker; every hour we "give" to the poor people is five dollars we have in some sense prevented them from earning. Paradoxically, it seems that the only service projects I should feel good about are the completely frivolous ones that no one would ever pay for.

Thinking about service in this way gives me the same complicated feeling I get when I think about gentrification. The wealthy invest time and energy in improving life in poor areas, be it through crime reduction or architectural revamping or free meals - and in doing so we spend leisure hours and leisure dollars that mean nothing to us, but could mean something to poorer families. Undoubtedly our efforts mitigate some of the immediate evils of urban poverty, but the flip side is that by doing so we are meddling in the local economy. Is the good we do worth this price?

Comments

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

I'm not convinced by your "every dollar we save them..." argument; it assumes that the dollars they have are sufficient to meet the need that exists. I think this axiom cannot possibly be correct.

Being waitstaff for a company to raise money is different, because the company sells something (parties) to customers, and uses that money to finance the something. When you provide services to poor people/old people/children, or the environment, or something like that, the poor people/environment/etc. are not paying you for this. They can't. (In all likelihood that's why they need service in the first place; if they could, they'd have already paid someone to fulfill the need.) The organizations which provide service to them have money because someone else provided it.

I suppose it is theoretically possible that a charity could say "there is only a small finite amount of need that we have to meet, so we'll stop spending money on it if we can find volunteers", but I find this very unlikely.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

You're probably right for some of what we do, maybe most of it. Obviously, the supply of money to local charities is not unbounded. I guess my worry is just that I'm not sure how I could in principle tell if my free labor is keeping someone out of work. Obviously work for corporations is on the "bad" side of the line; but what about work for a wealthy nonprofit like, say, a University? Doing anything for free around here is treading on dangerous ground. Undergraduates aren't allowed to lead mandatory discussion sections, even for free, because the TAA is afraid that if that becomes common practice then the departments will start using unpaid undergrads and TAs will be out of work. Campus cleanups are the same way - the workers union goes crazy. And in some way, they're right to worry - aren't they?

Again, I would be a lot smarter if I knew a damn thing about economics. (But at least I'm in good company (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2735269.stm). Er, perhaps I should revise that and just say "well-paid company.")

[leora.livejournal.com]

So stick to things that won't happen if people don't volunteer. Volunteer in food shelters. Visit lonely people in hospitals and nursing homes. Create reading sessions in libaries for children. Foster an animal shelter animal. etc.

There's a whole lot of people who could use help who aren't getting it, and they aren't going to benefit from people not helping them, because no one is going to pay to have someone help them.

There are a lot of volunteer positions that simply don't turn into jobs. Look around your community for the good organizations and see which are understaffed and underfunded and help them out.

[tiurin.livejournal.com]

Second what ukelele said. Also, while I think being paid waitstaff borders on the sketchy, some of what service organizations do is stuff(cleaning public places, perhaps?) where the additional utility that an institution derives from the service is not deemed great enough to shell out additional cash for said service. Which, though it might be sorta depressing, does mean that your services aren't taking anything out of anyone else's paycheck.

Though if there's really any doubts in your mind, you may as well do stuff like tutoring, for which there is a need, and is highly skilled labor that your clients likely won't be able to get for a remotely similar price range. Or, for that matter, realize/have as an option at all.

[cognative.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I take it that volunteering isn't just about being infinitly cheap labor, it's about providing it where it is needed. I'm sure you guys would balk at, say, volunteering to make Nike some shoes. But perhaps not at helping out the homeless. I guess it depends on what the "market" for what you want to do is.

Last thing I did on a regular basis was tutoring. It was definitly for some kids who needed it and would not have gotten it otherwise. I doubt I was putting some for hire tutor out of work because these kids wouldn't be able to afford them in the first place. So I guess that's my stance. It depends on if the need for that service is being met.

PS: I don't follow you totally on gentrification. Maybe my definition is slightly different than yours.

[rshruti.livejournal.com]

Keep in mind, of course, that all the money of a nonprofit has to go towards charitable purpose. So in essence you're enabling the organization to do more work with the existing money than it otherwise would have been able to do. If you weren't there to organize the food pantry or whatever, they would have to spend other resources doing that, which would mean cutting back service somewhere else.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

Oh, duh, that's a good point and I feel stupid for missing it.
Volunteer hours to nonprofits don't replace paid workers, they just move the money to workers paid to do other things. Or to goods, I suppose, but that helps the economy too.
Thanks. :)

[rshruti.livejournal.com]

I can't entirely take credit for the point; Jason pointed it out to me when I asked his opinion. But, you know, glad to help and all. :)