Volunteering is Meh

If you divided the bloggers in the personal finance and early retirement space into groups you could split them into the “Not early retired yet but on my way!” group and the “Already early retired and this is how I did it!” group. I’m in the second group and have been for going on four years now and that gives me a perspective on what early retirement is like that isn’t based on my imagination. It is based in cold hard reality.

I always enjoy blogs written by those who are on the journey but haven’t actually pulled the trigger on leaving the full time work world behind. It is kind of like listening to kids talk about what they want to do when they grow up. That’s not to say I’m the wise one, only to say dreaming about something and living it are two different things. Some dreamers talk about traveling full time, being nomadic and rootless whether that is in an RV or backpacking around the world living in hostels. And in fact there are some notable bloggers doing just that. My wife and I travel overseas and all over this country and we do enjoy it but after about five or six days we are usually missing home, I do not think we could ever adopt a permanent traveler lifestyle. Others see becoming organic farmers as an idyllic pursuit. I’m married to a farm girl and I’ve spent just enough time on farms to know that’s back breaking, monotonous and relentless work that isn’t on my list of fun times.

And many others list out what they’ll do on a typical early retired “day in the life of” with quite a detailed schedule. This often includes a pretty sizable chunk of time volunteering at Habitat for Humanity, a rescue animal facility or the local food pantry. That’s where I want to take you today. To the world of volunteering. Most FIRE devotees are living very busy lives, many have young children, pets and side gigs that just do not allow enough time for volunteer work. But many of these same people look forward to a more leisurely existence once they reach financial independence. A life with many unscheduled hours in it, maybe most of the hours they are currently spending at a 9 to 5 job. A frequent thought expressed is that they will spend some of these hours volunteering for a cause they believe in deeply. They feel this will provide them more meaning and fulfillment than their old day job and will be a key puzzle piece in their pursuit of happiness.

As a slightly early retired guy what has my experience shown me regarding the vast satisfaction that comes from volunteering? The short answer is that volunteering is not that satisfying and if you are expecting it to provide a major part of your reason for getting up in the morning, I think you’ll be disappointed. Ouch! That may have triggered a few millennial readers, and I’m sorry for that but it is for your own good. Let me see if I can explain why I am not so enthused about the volunteer life.

First I’m a habitual and lifelong volunteer. I always tell a similarly inclined friend of mine that she’s a pathological volunteer because she can’t tell anyone no, but the same thing is true for me. I always say yes. I’m a little more selective since I retired but the two main organizations I volunteer at are ones I’ve served with for over ten years and I believe deeply in their missions. One is a community college where I’ve seen people lift themselves out of abject poverty by gaining an education that changed their futures. The other is a foundation that provides low income medical care and end of life care. It helps people who have fallen through the cracks in our constantly changing health care system and literally both saves lives and lets people exit this world with dignity. Both of these nonprofits are doing life changing work that I support and believe in, so how can I find volunteering at them to be “less than” compared to my old day job?

Nonprofits are odd ducks compared to for profit businesses. They look like businesses from the outside. The college, for instance, charges tuition and fees to provide a service, such as a certificate or an associates degree in a field. They have employees they pay, teachers, maintenance workers, accountants and others, just like a business. They advertise like a business and compete with other community colleges and four year universities for customers. They look just like a business! The foundation provides medical care with doctors, nurse practitioners and nurses and they also have human resource professionals, IT technicians and administrative assistants. They charge a copay for visits and receive insurance payments for their patients. So both the college and the foundation look an awful lot like regular money making businesses from the outside. But there is one big difference. They lose money! Lots and lots of money. They do not charge their customers what it costs to provide their services, not even close. The college receives most of its income from the government and the foundation makes up for its losses by the investments gains on its endowment. They aren’t just nonprofits, they are negative profit organizations.

For someone who spent his career in a very “for profit” sector, oil and chemicals, it is hard to enjoy the process by which nonprofits do business. The best way I know to explain this is to contrast what my old world was like to what the college and foundation are like. Ambition is a huge driving force in the private sector. I looked at work as a game, with my goal being to climb as quickly and as high as I could on the corporate ladder. This would bring me financial rewards and an increasing amount of control over my job and my company. And that is what happened, I was paid plenty of money, enough to allow me to walk away from work when I stopped having fun. I also had a great deal of control over how I did my job and even in what I chose to do. But in the volunteer world most of the wages are constrained by government payments that do not keep pace with inflation. Add to that the fact that the clients that are being served do not have any money to pay for the services they need.

This basic lack of resources means that the kind of incentives like decent raises, bonuses and stock awards that can motivate corporate employees are not readily available in the nonprofit world. Most college employees are lucky to see a one percent raise. The amount of state money provided to support our college has been basically flat for years while inflation marches on, albeit at a fairly low pace in recent years. And while both the college and foundation have motivated employees it is hard to dig deep and kill it on a project when you know that no matter how hard you work your pay will not be affected. That’s a common millennial complaint in the for profit world but believe me it is far worse in the nonprofit sector. This cannot help but diminish the overall level of ambition, and as a guy who spent his career surrounded by thoroughbreds itching for a race it is not very inspiring. It impacts the overall morale and work ethic of most nonprofits, in my experience. There are a few self motivated true believers who are shining stars but they stand out for a reason, they are rare.

Alignment is another key part of the business world, at least at effective companies. It is critical that everyone understand the mission of the company and how their job ties into the mission. And people know that if they can’t demonstrate that on a daily basis they will probably be out on the street pretty quickly. At nonprofits there is little pressure to conform to a unified plan. Everyone seems to have their own ideas of what the organization should be doing and there is a lot of inefficiency in terms of people not playing well together. Everyone knows that the college has the mission of providing an affordable education to both traditional and non traditional clients but that means something different to every professor or administrative staffer. At the chemical plant we all knew we needed to maximize production, minimize costs and do it safely. The lack of clarity and lack of a coherent plan make volunteer work fuzzy and unfocused.

Excellence was the way to advance in the corporate world. You had to be fast and productive and at the same time you had to be a team player who took care of your coworkers. Living in that kind of world was a lot of fun. You had to be on your game all the time. There isn’t so much of that in the nonprofit world. Standards are much lower because lower pay doesn’t attract the same level of talent as higher pay does. CPA’s generally make more than accounting teachers and an IT professional at an oil company makes more than the same job at a charity. While we have a lot of talent where I volunteer we do not have the same level from top to bottom that I did on my team at the chemical plant. My engineers and some of my hourly union workers were making six figures, more than the highest paid professor at the college. The competition for the jobs at the plant was extreme because the pay was great, and the fact is you really do get what you pay for in this world. And making do with a less motivated and talented workforce can be very frustrating to a volunteer in the nonprofit space.

And finally, the dirty little secret of the volunteer world and of the organizations that accept volunteers is that they don’t really want your help. Don’t misunderstand, they need you because some of their grants are based on having volunteers signed up. But they do not really want you doing their jobs. They see volunteers first as a financial resource. Either because you’ll likely donate some money to them or because you’ll help them secure grant funding. Second you are an amateur and they have no real control over someone who can walk away at a moments notice if they get their feelings hurt, or just get bored. Can you imagine how great an assistant a volunteer would be in your day job? You’d have to cajole and coax them to do anything for you. And that would be exhausting. Face it, there are plenty of things at your day job you don’t like to do. And you do them only because they pay you and you need an income stream. None of that applies to volunteer work. So if you run a charitable organization part of what you have to do is find busy work for volunteers that can’t be trusted or relied on to do anything unpleasant or boring. I’m exaggerating this a little to make my point, but it is critical to understanding why volunteer work isn’t as much fun as you imagine. Volunteers just aren’t a good workforce because they lack the same kinds of incentives that paid workers have, so they don’t get the kind of work they are seeking.

All this may sound like a major downer to you, my bashing volunteering. I do not mean to do that, and I have not reduced my volunteer work in any way. I just want to make it clear that in itself, volunteering, even for very noble causes, does not make up for a lack of purpose in the rest of your life. It simply isn’t enough by itself. It can be a meaningful piece of your plan, but if you are like me you’ll find it brings with the satisfaction, equal helpings of frustration and tedium. I do it because it is important work that changes lives. I do not do it because the work itself is fulfilling, but I do it to give back in gratitude for what education has provided me. And I do it because I can afford the best medical care and I want that for everyone regardless of their income.

Compared to my old corporate job, volunteering isn’t as much fun, most of the time. Frankly I think you’ll find that to be true for you as well. But life is not about just doing fun things. It is about doing worthwhile things. It is about making a difference in the lives of others and volunteering is one way to do that, even if it is a little muddled and imperfect. That’s my take from this side of the retired life.

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What about you? If you have pulled the trigger on early or not so early retirement have you found the volunteer world to be as lacking in instant gratification as I have?

Or if you are still chained to your job do you have any plans to volunteer some day? If so, are you counting on it to be a major source of joy in your life or will you just look at it as a job worth doing?