Setting Expectations - Volunteer Network Administrator
-
@scottalanmiller said:
@Hubtech said:
was in this situation. not my personal church, and not exactly but there were a client who wanted a discount b/c they were a church. (for this area a mega-church)
I would charge extra. Few businesses are as ruthless and unethical as churches. They have deep pockets and will screw you any chance they get. They are the last business that should get discounts.
When I worked in big box music retail (guitar center, et al), I was once asked "is that god's price on that?" It was a $99 microphone with zero margin. It wasn't $10k worth of PA gear, it was 1 f*cking mic. That was one of the final nails in that career coffin, because it happened all too often.
-
I won't comment as I would like to... here is what I would do in your situation. Itemize the work you have done for them, hand them a "bill" and then never volunteer again for this organization.
-
@RojoLoco said:
When I worked in big box music retail (guitar center, et al), I was once asked "is that god's price on that?" It was a $99 microphone with zero margin. It wasn't $10k worth of PA gear, it was 1 f*cking mic. That was one of the final nails in that career coffin, because it happened all too often.
Tell them "If God needs a mic, he gets a mic. Clearly this is you wanting a mic, you don't get a discount."
-
You should never volunteer for any organization without billing them. This under values your contribution. However if you choose to give them discounts great you are a nice guy. ALWAYS charge for work you do in your professional life. You are setting yourself up for frustration and to be taken advantage of. That is human nature, has nothing to do with what type of organization.
-
@RojoLoco said:
When I worked in big box music retail (guitar center, et al), I was once asked "is that god's price on that?" It was a $99 microphone with zero margin. It wasn't $10k worth of PA gear, it was 1 f*cking mic. That was one of the final nails in that career coffin, because it happened all too often.
I'm guessing it was an SM58? lol
-
@Minion-Queen said:
You should never volunteer for any organization without billing them. This under values your contribution. However if you choose to give them discounts great you are a nice guy. ALWAYS charge for work you do in your professional life. You are setting yourself up for frustration and to be taken advantage of. That is human nature, has nothing to do with what type of organization.
If you feel the need to discount, do it AFTER the fact and only when the organization behaves well. In this case, you could have billed full, and then donated the money back to them when they behave well. If they fail to behave well, like this did, you can start keeping it instead of donating it back.
No organization really appreciates free help long term. For a single day or weekend, sure, that can work. But eventually they just see you as an employee. And in the case of a large organization like a church there is no "person" getting the benefit of the free work (we hope) so there is no one who appreciates it.
And since the pastors and secretary aren't likely free, it makes you look like the janitor to them since it is worth paying the trivial staff, you must be worth even less than they are.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
No organization really appreciates free help long term.
I think this is the key. When you start, it's great, but a few weeks later it's status-quo and they will hate you like they do any other normal paid vendor when things go wrong.
And since the pastors and secretary aren't likely free, it makes you look like the janitor to them since it is worth paying the trivial staff, you must be worth even less than they are.
OK I can't agree with this. are you saying by human nature if we see someone getting paid less than ourselves we see them as less of people or if not less of a person, at least less of a professional person?
-
@Dashrender said:
OK I can't agree with this. are you saying by human nature if we see someone getting paid less than ourselves we see them as less of people or if not less of a person, at least less of a professional person?
Yes, especially when you do a job that gets money and someone else doesn't get paid at all. We are trained, especially in America, that in a capitalist society that scarcity is based on skill primarily and that cost is based on need and scarcity. So the more able you are, the more you make. We are trained from childhood to see the value of work measured in pay for that work. When you pay for a secretary or a pastor but don't pay for other positions, what else would they assume? Why is the IT job volunteer but not the secretary job if one isn't more important or more valuable? What do you expect them to think? Anything else goes against the culture, their training and anything that we learn from business.
-
@Dashrender said:
I think this is the key. When you start, it's great, but a few weeks later it's status-quo and they will hate you like they do any other normal paid vendor when things go wrong.
Which really only makes sense if they also equate cost with value. If they didn't, they would see you as donating tons of money and being a real contributor. That they do not supports my theory that they see the position as worth less than that of the secretary.
-
I'll agree if it wasn't a 'charitable organization' the culture is to see lower pay to less value, but that SHOULDN'T be the case in a charitable organization like a church. In fact quite the opposite.
Which really only makes sense if they also equate cost with value. If they didn't, they would see you as donating tons of money and being a real contributor. That they do not supports my theory that they see the position as worth less than that of the secretary.
Yeah, there becomes a real disconnect as you mention.
The best solution for this is if you do want to donate your time, do as Scott suggested earlier. Explain to them that your contribution needs to be compensated, but that it is your plan to donate all of that compensation back to the church in the same way every other parishioner of the church does, which checks in the collection plate. This will allow them to value you and you're getting a tax write-off at the same time.
-
@Dashrender said:
This will allow them to value you and you're getting a tax write-off at the same time.
LOL, sort of. If you donate 100% that they give you, you are in the same boat as if they had paid you nothing. It doesn't benefit you except to be able to prove to an employer that you earn more than you bring home via tax statements. For example, a church could pay you a billion a year if they know you will donate it all back BECAUSE they lose nothing and you break even on taxes but you can show a potential employer that you earn a billion a year so they should pay you more because you are worth so much
-
The definetly have money. But,
They won't pay anyone who isn't considered a Ministry position our accountant isn't even paid. (Pastors, Children's Directors etc)
-
@thecreativeone91 said:
The definetly have money. But,
They won't pay anyone who isn't considered a Ministry position our accountant isn't even paid. (Pastors, Children's Directors etc)
Then that's their problem. Don't volunteer to be treated like dirt.
-
@Hubtech said:
as long as this isn't a mom and pop small country church....they have money, get paid, do the work, etc. etc. etc.
That's pretty much all we have in the UK. I find this thread fascinating as it the US seems to have a completely different culture around churches than Europe. I think there are a handful of evangelical American style churches that are gaining popularity here, but I've never seen one. Here, pretty much all churches are broke and rely on unpaid volunteers to survive. I guess because of that culture of complete amateurishness I'd never expect a volunteer to get yelled out - it just wouldn't happen.
-
@Carnival-Boy said:
@Hubtech said:
as long as this isn't a mom and pop small country church....they have money, get paid, do the work, etc. etc. etc.
That's pretty much all we have in the UK. I find this thread fascinating as it the US seems to have a completely different culture around churches than Europe. I think there are a handful of evangelical American style churches that are gaining popularity here, but I've never seen one. Here, pretty much all churches are broke and rely on unpaid volunteers to survive. I guess because of that culture of complete amateurishness I'd never expect a volunteer to get yelled out - it just wouldn't happen.
Yep, same boat here. Most churches here struggle to pay ONE pastor.
It also depends heavily on the church your are in.
Â
Don't forget that people ate the same no matter where you go. The faces and names change but the issues are the same. -
@thecreativeone91 said:
So I manage my churches network, it's a volunteer gig. We have a sem-small network. 3 Cisco SG300 50 port Layer 3 switches. 1 is an Access switch in our worship center, one is downstairs in the worship center server room with is access for all downstairs plus the servers. and one in the chapel. All have etherchannel trunks configured between them. We have a lot of traffic for services all of our IMAG screens and displays around the campus and in the class rooms is done over http://www.justaddpower.com/ which is HDMI encoded over TCP/IP. Each video source uses it's own vlan which is how matrixes are down.
Ok so there's the background on some of our network. A few weeks they asked to have VPN access from home. We at that time we did not have a public IP address as we are on a free connection through a WISP that is ran by one of my friends and he only does public ips for static addresses. Anyway, I told them I'd look into it. I ask my friend at the WISP if it would be possible to get a static IP on our connection and how much it would cost. He was nice enough and made the change right away and didn't charge us for the static IP. The Problem though is of course this changed our router config setup. It didn't automatically pull down this new information. The internet for them was down for about 2hrs total. I didn't know it was even down for a little while or that he had made the change. I got there as soon as I could to make the changes. 1 Person was in the building - a secretary. who was there a total of 30 minutes before the network was backup.
I got chewed out for this outage by leadership because the secretary was unable to do some of the work they needed her to do and downtime isn't acceptable . How would you address their too high of expectation? I told them if they want fast responses they need to higher someone I can't always be there, and I did something about it as fast as I could. Before I redid the network they were just using a Linkysys e2000 router/ap going straight into their old modem. It went down all the time then (and this was mounted in the ceiling where no one knew where it was so they couldn't reset it themselves).
Yeah, that's not cool. They sound like they are running one of those dodgy small businesses that think they are a Fortune 100.
You should confront them (kindly) about how they are treating you. It's not right and it is toxic.
Â
Your work sounds exemplary and they sound like they expect too much of your time.
Â
When you do confront them (not IF, damn it), explain to them that if they would like you there more then you will have to start billing them as what they are expecting is a contractor. You only have so much time that you can give to them before it starts impacting heavily on your home and work time. -
@nadnerB said:
Yep, same boat here. Most churches here struggle to pay ONE pastor.
Religion is a huge business in America. HUGE business. These are massive corporations with enormous budgets. There is no religion with these organizations, it is pure business ventures.
-
@Carnival-Boy said:
@Hubtech said:
as long as this isn't a mom and pop small country church....they have money, get paid, do the work, etc. etc. etc.
That's pretty much all we have in the UK. I find this thread fascinating as it the US seems to have a completely different culture around churches than Europe. I think there are a handful of evangelical American style churches that are gaining popularity here, but I've never seen one. Here, pretty much all churches are broke and rely on unpaid volunteers to survive. I guess because of that culture of complete amateurishness I'd never expect a volunteer to get yelled out - it just wouldn't happen.
That actually restores a tiny amount of 'faith' into some religion (which ever one those poor churches are part of). Churches should be poor - they should be pouring all of their financial resources into outreach ... not making a fancy building, etc, etc, etc...
-
@Dashrender said:
That actually restores a tiny amount of 'faith' into some religion (which ever one those poor churches are part of). Churches should be poor - they should be pouring all of their financial resources into outreach ... not making a fancy building, etc, etc, etc...
Yes, the goals of most American churches is very, very different than the goals of most European ones (or elsewhere in the world.) Remember the first major settlement in America was from "Puritans" who were an extemist cult group looking to found a power grabbing new colony where they could forcibly control the population while simultaneously waging a civil war in England where they successfully, for a short period, managed to overthrow the nation and put a religious dictator in control!! The Puritans were the 1600s equivalent to ISIS today - Christianity and religion were the absolute last thing that they actually cared about. They were the farthest thing from a real Christian that one can imagine, just like ISIS is nothing like Islam. So that heritage of religion as mask for business and religion as a mast for ethnic cleansing and religion as a mask for political control is a cornerstone of America and something that will take a very long time to overcome, if it ever can be.
-
@Dashrender said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
@Hubtech said:
as long as this isn't a mom and pop small country church....they have money, get paid, do the work, etc. etc. etc.
That's pretty much all we have in the UK. I find this thread fascinating as it the US seems to have a completely different culture around churches than Europe. I think there are a handful of evangelical American style churches that are gaining popularity here, but I've never seen one. Here, pretty much all churches are broke and rely on unpaid volunteers to survive. I guess because of that culture of complete amateurishness I'd never expect a volunteer to get yelled out - it just wouldn't happen.
That actually restores a tiny amount of 'faith' into some religion (which ever one those poor churches are part of). Churches should be poor - they should be pouring all of their financial resources into outreach ... not making a fancy building, etc, etc, etc...
Yep. This is why I like working with God's pit crew and other disaster relief orgizations. I went to Alabama in 2011 after the tuscolusa tornado and help with cutting trees and re-roofing.
