Paid work, doing stuff for free and wrangling with ‘value’
I am a freelancer. I work loosely in the UK’s non-profit sector (or whatever you want to call it). I tend to follow my nose as to what I want to work on. Sometimes (and often surprisingly) I get paid; other times I don’t.
Recently, I have been feeling that the best work I do — or have ever done — is when there’s no (direct link to) money or a specified funder. But I don’t consider myself a volunteer in this regard. I supplement this type of work through paid work.
This has got me thinking. What is the best work to me? How does that relate to ‘value’ in the broadest sense, both personally and wider? How might I publicly articulate the link between my paid and unpaid work without disrupting the dynamic between them?
Firstly, what kinds of things am I talking about when I say ‘unpaid work’? Well, for me they’re the things that are clearly intertwined with and related to what I do as a freelancer but I do them because I think they have ‘value’ to me, others or the sector more broadly. And most of the time, it’s quicker to do them ‘for free’ without having to seek funding first.
Some tangible, obvious examples of this include:
So, why do these things for free? I’m not sure I have a good or unselfish answer to this, but it goes something like this…
It feels fun. It feels like I’m truly focusing on what I think should be done without interference from outside influence, by which I mean someone else’s money and all that comes with it. It feels like an opportunity to learn something new. It feels nice to share things with others and get a positive response. It means I get to work alongside others, with whom I might not have the opportunity otherwise.
With all this in mind, then, I have started to think about the value of work — both paid and unpaid — as a fluid, subjective and unscientific function of multiple components. And it’s the combining of these components that leads to a decision as to whether I do something or not. The function looks a bit like this:
Value (V) = as + bp + cl + dw + eo + fm
where a, b, c, d, e and f are variable constants depending on my mood or financial circumstances, and…
s is (potential) satisfaction/enjoyment; p is financial payment; l is learning opportunity; w is the wider, repeated benefit to others if the work is shared openly; o is the other people I would be working with; and m is the marketing potential for me as a freelancer.
Somehow, I get to a point where V tips over a threshold and I say yes to something. And I can tell you from experience that the value of V for a given project does not always stay static throughout its lifetime!
I told you it was unscientific.
To wrap this all up, I feel like it’s important to recognise the role of money in all of this. Obviously, I have bills to pay. But also because notions of ‘volunteering’ need to be challenged and thought about in the broader context of understanding how it’s actually enabled, for the volunteers themselves but also the groups or organisations that broker it.
Thinking about all of this from my perspective…
I usually cost paid projects using a (variable) day rate as a guide to give an overall project cost. I tell people what the day rate is. Sometimes the project takes more time than I imagine, sometimes less.
What I don’t tell people explicitly, however, is that by paying for a piece of work, they are in fact subsidising the unpaid bits and bobs I do. Could I be clearer about this? Could I be so explicit as to say that 10% of all project costs (or day rate) will fund other stuff outside of your control but from which you and others might reap the benefits? Could this be an optional supplement to my day rate? In other words, for every x days of paid stuff, could I accrue a day of unpaid project working?
As much as I like this idea, because it makes it clear that nothing happens for free, I’m still not sure how that might disrupt my function above, the balance of which has become really important to me.
If anyone’s tried things around this I would love to hear about it. I’m on Twitter here and LinkedIn here. Or you can get in touch through my website here.
