When I think about the values I have in my art practice, I try to save time to do things to support the local art community. For years I worked at an arts non-profit and every weekend during the summer I did outreach and demos in dozens of tents and parks and farmers markets. I’ve done creative work like graphic design and website maintenance for several organizations. I’ve served on boards of directors for non-profits. I’ve been a panelist and guest speaker for arts events. All things I am good at and I love doing. Because I worked at a non-profit, I know exactly how valuable volunteers are to the success of a lot of programs and I try to be one of those volunteers when I can.

One of my favorite tasks (and one of the hardest) is serving as a panelist to review grant applications. You have to apply to be a panelist and attend a training session to learn about the specific grant and criteria to look at. Then, you read and score applications from arts non-profits who are looking to help lower the cost of tickets for musical events, or buy new sound system equipment, or hire specialists to help them out. They get to tell what their need is and how it will help the organization accomplish its goals. The proposals are always fascinating to read and I learn so much about organizations I had never heard of before and art media that I don’t know anything about. I feel like grant panels are really important because I have been the recipient of several grants; someone sat on that panel and evaluated my proposal and so I feel like I am paying the community back.

Sometimes it’s hard to be a volunteer.

I’ve had some volunteer jobs that ended up being not a lot of fun. I had long-term volunteer job that broke down recently into a not so great situation. We were working on a couple of big projects and things just melted down. I think there was some miscommunication and some timeline stress behind the scenes. I emailed some other non-profit friends for advice. How should I handle this? What do I do to not make the situation more stressful? Should I just step away?

One comment really stood out for me and I keep thinking about it: I never volunteer to do something I get paid for.

My friend basically said that “volunteering your time is not the same thing as giving away your expertise”, especially when it comes to creative/art work. There’s an idea that creative volunteer work is supposed to be “fun” and flexible. You can do revisions, slip timelines, or change things on the fly because it’s free volunteer work and something you do for fun or because you believe in the cause. However, the exact same tasks become more “official” and valuable the minute someone gets paid for it.

We laughed when I said “no one has ever given me a hard time about how I cleaned up trash after a fundraising party”.

That statement is abolutely not true for other more skilled volunteer jobs like graphic design. Ironically, the creative work that I’m good at is much harder and less rewarding to volunteer for than things like folding programs, working the registration table, or cleaning up the trash.

So I’ve been thinking about that statement a lot.

I’m curious: Do you have boundaries or rules that you set around volunteering? What makes you want to volunteer? Or NOT volunteer for something?