Non-profits, art lovers and potential volunteers mingle at the Canadian Museum of History for Ottawa’s Timeraiser. Photo © Mara Selanders
By Mara Selanders
OTTAWA — In a world of viral challenges and clicking to donate, giving to charity is changing.
While the Internet and social media have changed how we give, non-profit organization Framework is challenging the concept of what we give.
Paloma Raggo, assistant professor of philanthropy and non-profit organizations at Carleton University, says that time can be more valuable than money.
“Imagine you had someone who is an accountant and is willing to give ten hours of their time—that’s actually a lot of money. People think it’s free but actually it’s not. It’s worth a lot.”
“One of the most valuable things some people have is their time.”
Ottawa’s seventh Timeraiser took place in early November. It put thirty local non-profits and the work of thirty local artists under one roof. The public is invited to network with the organizations and bid on art through a silent auction.
Donors choose which non-profit to give to with their bids. The catch: instead of bidding money, donors are asked to bid up to 100 volunteer hours that they need to complete in order to receive the art.
The Framework team came up with the idea in the early 2000s and the first event was held in Calgary in 2006, spreading to Vancouver and Ottawa in 2008. It has been growing ever since.
To date, the event has logged 162,067 hours—about 18 and a half years—of volunteer time.
Timeraiser is a chance for skilled people to match their qualifications with a non-profit that can make the most of them. For many non-profit organizations, this skills matching is fundamental to their success.
Marley Lewington is one of those people. The public relations student at Algonquin College came to Timeraiser to engage with her community in a meaningful way and match her public relations skills with an organization in need.
Lewington networks at Ottawa’s Timeraiser. Photo © Mara Selanders.
“The community and the charity aspect really spoke to me. I really like how you get to go out and meet people and have a good time while supporting local artists and local charities that are supporting our community. I really like that sort of personal one-on-one connection.” — Marley Lewington, Timeraiser donor
Lewington said she was nervous at first about whether or not her skills would be useful, but soon found that many non-profits were looking for help with communications.
“Most of the vendors and charities I have spoken to have communications positions available—web design, graphic design, a lot of marketing and fundraising positions. That seems to be the theme that is popping up everywhere,” she said.
The popularity of social media means that many organizations need to rethink the way they connect.
“A lot of these organizations have been around for at least ten to 30 years so they have a lot of the tools in place to be successful. They’re already doing it all, they just need a bit of a revamp. I feel like I can offer that,” said Lewington.
Lewington met with several different organizations before settling on the Ottawa Centre Ecodistrict and EcoEquitable. She will split her volunteer time between each. Both organizations suit her passion for environmental sustainability but get her out of her comfort zone of food security. Lewington currently volunteers as communications director for the Ottawa chapter of Canadian Organic Growers.
Lewington pictured with Ottawa Centre EcoDistrict program coordinator Clark Trivers. Photo © Mara Selanders.
Once bids were cast, there was a long wait to find out if she had even won. The wait so long that Lewington had to leave before results had been announced. Framework sent her an email with the good news.
“It was really exciting,” she said.
On Nov. 19, Lewington attended webinars to prepare for her hours. Framework created the classes and designed them to make sure all art winners understand the volunteer procedure. As they complete their hours, volunteers log time on a website called Civic Footprint so that the organization can keep track of time spent on charitable initiatives and winners can prove they are eligible to receive their art piece.
She said she plans to spend her hours rewriting communications strategies as a public relations consultant, giving advice and tools for organizations to spread the word about what they do. Lewington says the average hourly rate for a public relations consultant at a non-profit level is about $87, making her time worth an estimated $8,700.
Skills like Lewington’s are often in high demand at the Timeraiser. Hugh Nelson, executive director at Y’s Owl Maclure Co-operative Centre, says that this year his organization looked for volunteers to help them engage with the community.
Nelson pictured with colleague Jill Broadbent at the Timeraiser. Photo © Mara Selanders.
“Getting volunteers that will go out and actually tell people what we do and get them to commit to be patrons or friends of Y’s Owl Maclure is a very important role for us, being a small organization,” he said.
The organization may be small, but Nelson says the volume of programming it organizes is not. Y’s Owl is a co-operative centre for those who have developmental disabilities or are on the autism spectrum. Though the centre is funded by the provincial government and employs 26 people, he says its various programs cannot be managed without volunteers.
Volunteers could be anything from board member to dance instructor, depending on interest.
Nelson says it’s important to have a variety of positions to suit different types of volunteers.
“The engagement part is always—I don’t want to say difficult, but you need to make sure that you’ve caught them in the very right niche that they want.”
“With a youthful volunteer, they think they have a lot of time, but life gets pretty crowded. So if there’s a volunteer position where you can sort of get in and get out that seems to work a lot better.”
But this isn’t the case with every position. Emilia Perri, volunteer co-ordinator at Aphasia Ottawa, says that they came to the Timeraiser looking for a different demographic of volunteer.
Perri and colleague Stephanie Isaacs at the Timeraiser. Photo © Mara Selanders.
“We get a lot of student applications, which are good, especially from September until April, but we’re at the point where we’re looking for people more long-term,” said Perri.
Aphasia Ottawa is a community-based rehabilitation centre for people with aphasia: a disorder that renders those who have it unable to communicate following a brain injury, most often stroke. The organization provides physiotherapy, speech-language therapy and counseling support for the client and their family.
Working with populations in vulnerable positions means that volunteer training can take as many as 12 weeks before everyone feels completely comfortable—a commitment difficult to rationalize if the volunteer leaves after four months.
Regardless of whether or not they found more long-term volunteers, just the exposure from Timeraiser made a difference, says Perri. Aphasia is an invisible disability that many people are unfamiliar with, so the event gave the Ottawa organization an opportunity to educate.
Timeraiser brought the organization three potential volunteers, which is significant for a staff with only two full-time employees.
“We rely really heavily on volunteers to help us in all of our programs. Day-to-day I don’t think we could be open from 9 to 5 if we didn’t have volunteers helping us,” says Perri.
She says while money is necessary as it buys more hours, time that is given for free is equally as important.
With roughly 9,000 attendees and 639 participating organizations since 2006, the popularity of Timeraiser suggests volunteers and non-profits both want to make the most of their time.
In the money versus time donation debate, Raggo says it comes down to a tension between engagement and action.
Initiatives like Timeraiser work because people want to move past the “give me a dollar now and I’ll never hear back from you” model, says Raggo.
“When you call upon people giving time, this really goes the next step beyond just making an action, opening your chequebook and giving some money. It requires that you have an engagement with the organization,” she says.
“I think people are actually interested in being engaged.”
