The Cost of Free

Volunteers are awesome. Donations are awesome.

We regularly benefit from both, and their valuable is inestimable to the operations of virtually all non-profit organizations.

But neither is free.

"The Cost of Free" is something we've discussed many times with clients and co-workers over the years. In essence, this is the hidden, unintended cost of taking and utilizing time, talent, and treasure that are provided for free.

When serving a small school years ago, the example here was a call from a principal. She was so happy that a donor had just dropped on 30 new iPads. Practically bubbling over with the opportunity available to her students. She was a great educator.

But I mentioned to her that he building didn't have wireless coverage in the intended rooms. She asked if that was a problem, and we went into the potential costs. While ultimately we made it work, the school ended up spending thousands of dollars outside their budget, in order to utilize what was absolutely a generous gift.

Volunteers work in much the same way. Any organization that's made the move to having a paid position of Volunteer Coordinator or similar has surely found their volunteers suddenly much more effective and helpful. The cost of free work is in someone's time, and likely wages, to manage, monitor, train, and maintain the quality of scheduling of the generous offering of time provided by the community.