129 – Paid or Volunteer Role? A Simple Checklist

September 26, 2024

Episode #129: Paid or Volunteer Role? A Simple Checklist 

In this episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast, Tobi provides a thorough guide on distinguishing between paid and volunteer roles within nonprofit organizations. Tobi offers a simple checklist and key considerations involving legal implications, labor laws, and tax aspects. She also touches on sustainability, efficiency, and the integration of volunteers into organizational frameworks, advocating a balanced approach to distributing tasks and avoiding burnout! 

Volunteer Role – Episode Highlights

• [01:50] – Vision Week 2025: Strategic Planning Bootcamp 
• [05:31] – Structuring Your Team 
• [07:40] – Legal Considerations: Paid vs. Volunteer Role 
• [16:16] – Checklist for Deciding Paid vs. Volunteer Role 
• [29:14] – Final Thoughts 

Helpful Links

• VolunteerPro Membership Community 
• VisionWeek 2025  
• Volunteer Nation Podcast Episode #108: Definition of a Volunteer – Why It Matters to Be Precise 
• US Department of Labor Fact Sheet #14A: Non-Profit Organizations and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) 
• IRS, Employer’s Tax Guide to Fringe Benefits 2024 
• Tobi Johnson & Associates Blog Volunteers and the Law: Legal Considerations for Your Nonprofit  

Contact Us

Have questions or suggestions for the show? Email us at wecare@volpro.net.

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Episode #129 Transcript: Paid or Volunteer Role? A Simple Checklist 

Tobi: Well, hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast. I’m your host, Tobi Johnson. And today I want to talk about Paid or volunteer roles. How do you decide, simple checklist for you is what I’m going to provide today because I know so many of you are seeking to expand volunteer roles at your organization and sometimes, you’re restructuring your staffing, you’re bringing on new volunteers, you’re bringing on new programs, you’re sunsetting programs. 

So, there’s always ways that our organization’s human resources are in flux. And when those times happen, we always are left with this question or met with this question of, well, which roles should be paid, and which roles should be volunteer? And so, I thought I’d help you think this through a little bit. 

There is an art to it. There’s a little bit of law. There’s a little bit of legal consideration when you think about employees versus unpaid volunteers. But there’s also some art to it and some strategic thinking around it. And so, I want to provide you with a checklist. But before we get going, I have a question for you. 

Have you begun to think about how your organization will plan volunteer engagement and mobilization for 2025? If you have begun to think about it, or not, or you haven’t really got a plan in place to get your plan together for 2025, I want to invite you to a very special event we’re having online. It’s called Vision Week 2025.This is our third annual strategic planning boot camp. It is a ton of fun. We meet once a day for five days. It’s going to be November, uh, 18th through 22nd, and we have about hour long sessions each day, but you should also set aside time each day for your own work. So, you can finish your plan in five days. 

Yep. I said it. Finish your plan in five days if you come prepared and when you enroll, I’ll send you all kinds of information about how to get prepared to, to make that sprint. And by Friday to have a completed plan. We already have 550 people on our wait list, so we don’t really have a limit to the number of people who can participate. 

We’ll see. There might be, we may at some point decide, okay, that’s enough people. But if you want to join us, join our waitlist so that when registration starts, which will probably open up in a few weeks, we will let you know, you’ll be the first to know that registration is open. And we’ve got a few different structures for pricing this year. 

We wanted to make Vision Week as affordable as possible for as many people as possible. So, we have a few different levels. One level is just listen-only. No workbooks, no slides, no replay recordings, anything. And that’s 29. So, I don’t, I don’t think that’s a, the price would be a barrier for anybody. But if you want to join us for the full event, we’re going to have an early bird rate, but the full rate will be 99. 

But I’ll let y’all know the earlier bird rate since when, if you’re on the wait list. So, make sure you join the waitlist, and you can get in on that early bird rate. I think it’ll be about 79. Don’t quote me on that. I don’t think I have all of the information, but we know what we’re going to be teaching. 

We are going to have a pop-up community. So, there’s a lot of networking and interaction that’s going to be happening and sharing. I’m going to be popping in every day with some leadership, mindful moments, little tutorials, little fun things. It’s really a fun event. But the most important thing is that. 

It will give you the focus and clarity to really get that plan done because there’s nothing better than finishing up the year already having a plan in place about what you’re going to do, you know, week one or day one of the following year. You know, we can’t just leave these things up to chance or we’re stuck with huge to do lists without any direction. 

And we’re also at the whim of time. of other people driving our strategy. So, we need to take control as leaders of our own strategy and that means getting it down on paper and I’m going to help you do that step by step by step. I will show you the processes we use, and I have used for years to make this work. 

So, if you haven’t joined the waitlist, just go to volpro.net/vision Get on the waitlist. We’ll let you know when doors open and how to get your hands on our early bird rate. I hope to see you there. Now let’s get into today’s episode. 

A couple of weeks ago, I offered and presented a seminar to our volunteer pro members called structure your team step by step what to stop start and delegate because so many of our volunteer pro members are rebuilding or renovating their volunteer programs it was a big, big deal. request from folks when we did our member survey, we, we survey our members twice a year to find out what they’re working on and then we develop training that’s specifically tailored to their projects. 

We were talking about that, and you know, I thought I’d share just a little snippet of some of what I trained in that session. You know, as we make changes in our organization, it’s always. You know, it always makes sense to review our assumptions about what we consider to be paid versus unpaid work projects, tasks, and leadership. 

I’m including leadership in this that can and should be delegated to new or existing volunteer roles. So we’re always kind of thinking about, you know, what’s the best, most optimal way to deploy talent. In service of our missions. That’s really what the bottom-line question is today. I’m going to share a little bit about Some of that training, of course the training had a lot more to it You know, we did a lot more work on you know, how to decide what to delegate how to optimize how to create a culture all that good stuff. 

If you want to access the entire training, if you’re a volunteer pro member, just go into the pro talk community and circle and look in the replay recordings. It’ll be posted there with the handout, the worksheet or workbook. I’m sorry, the slides, et cetera, and a chart of accountabilities. If you’re not yet a member, you can join us – just go to: volpro.net/join You can join as a monthly member, or an annual member and you can immediately get access to that replay recording. If that’s a topic that’s important to you right now and you’re doing a lot of restructuring of your teams, this would be really good training for you. 

So, let’s talk about volunteer versus paid in legal terms. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, and I know we have listeners from around the world, so check with your Department of Labor about their definition of a volunteer or unpaid labor. country has its own definition, some may not have them yet, which that’s a great area of advocacy. 

I think we need to have definitions so that people aren’t exploited. So if your country has a weak definition or doesn’t yet have a definition on in your laws, that’s a great area of advocacy. And I would definitely promote advocating that you have a clear definition of who is a volunteer and who is a paid employee. 

For the U.S. Department of Labor, their definition is, and I’m going to quote this word for word, I’m going to put a link to this fact sheet on the Fair Labor Standards Act from the U.S. Department of Labor as well, which is the source document from what I’m reading. But the reason we want to know the definition is if we treat a volunteer like an employee and we don’t pay them, then we are breaking the law around the Fair Labor Standards Act. 

And the volunteers could come back to us, or that volunteer could come back to us and sue our organization for unpaid wages, benefits, etc. And so we definitely want to be clear. So according to the U. S. Department of Labor, a volunteer generally will not be considered an employee for FLSA purposes if the individual volunteers freely for public service, religious, or humanitarian objectives and without contemplation or receipt compensation. 

So, that’s the first part. No compensation, that means that we’re not expected to get a stipend, we’re not expected to get perks that have monetary value, and we’re working for an organization that does some type of compensation. greater good. The second part of this is that typically such volunteers serve on a part-time basis and do not displace regular employed workers or perform work that would otherwise be performed by regular employees. 

Now, that makes it really difficult, right? Because we have plenty of organizations where we like to do that. engage volunteers in skilled roles. So that’s always up to interpretation. And that’s part of what I’m going to talk about later today in this podcast, because that kind of leaves a lot to be desired. 

interpretation. In addition, they say, paid employees of a nonprofit organization cannot volunteer to provide the same type of services to their nonprofit organization that they are employed to provide. So that speaks directly to staff who are asked to volunteer and do the same work that they already do. 

And you can kind of see why that’s problematic, right? You’re basically asking somebody to work part of their time for free, which is illegal. But back to this idea of not displacing employed workers. If you are in the situation of restructuring your teams, both paid and volunteer roles, you want to think about how you are plugging in volunteer roles and it would not look good to the Department of Labor if you laid off a bunch of paid staff and replaced them with unpaid volunteers. 

The staff could be Sue you for wrongful termination and volunteers could make a case for back wages, benefits, etc. So, we want to be kind of clear when we are restructuring that we are not, you know, volunteers are here to supplement the work of paid staff. The volunteer role should not replace an existing paid staff role. 

Sometimes it takes reorganization writ large to try to figure out what new roles need to be developed that will best meet the mission for the current moment. In short, volunteers, according to the Department of Labor work towards public service, religious or humanitarian objectives. They do not expect to receive compensation, and they do not displace any genuine employees. 

That’s really the first step towards determining whether something is a paid employee role or a volunteer role. Now, I’ve got a link to the Department of Labor fact sheet, nonprofit organizations in the Fair Labor Standards Act.So, check that out in the show notes if you want more detail on that. 

When you add a new volunteer role, you need to be sure to check to ensure that they should not be classified as an employee. That goes for paid interns as well, I should call out. In general, if people are paid, then they must be treated like an employee. So, they must pay taxes, they must be offered some type of benefit. 

There are specifics to paid interns. If you want to know more about the definition of volunteerism or a volunteer, check out Volunteer Nation episode 108, the definition of a volunteer, why it matters to be precise where I go into this in more detail. But I wanted to call this out as the first step towards deciding if something should be a paid or volunteer role. 

Now, also. These types of employment classifications. I’m just going to note this as a side note that there are also tax implications for volunteers, even if they are considered a volunteer under the law. So obviously, if someone’s considered an employee, then there are tax implications. According to the IRS, there are also specific quote unquote fringe benefits that are given to employees or volunteers that may be taxable. 

Now, if you do volunteer recognition events that have food and drink, those are generally acceptable and not taxable. Certificates and plaques are generally acceptable and not taxable, but if you start giving volunteers things of monetary value like gift cards, et cetera, then they may be taxable. I linked in the show notes or will link in the show notes to an employer tax guide to fringe benefits and it’s an IRS publication and you can look in more detail in that. 

There’s a section, um, on de minimis fringe benefits, the sort of minimal fringe benefits, and it kind of walks you through which would be taxed, and which would be not. Now the publication is more for employees, but it also applies to volunteers. So, I just wanted to call that out just because sometimes we mix up employment classification of whether someone should be an employee or a volunteer with what are the tax implications. 

Those are basically two different things. Okay, so I just wanted to call that out a little bit. Also, you can check out Tobi Johnson and Associates. I have a blog called Volunteers in the Law, Legal Considerations for Your Nonprofit. I linked to that blog post also in the show notes, so you can check that out. 

All right, let’s keep going. After the break, I’m going to take a quick break and then after the break I want to give you a checklist and kind of a way of thinking about paid versus unpaid. So, let’s take a pause for my discussion on how to choose whether a new position should be paid or a volunteer role. We’ll be right back.  

If you’re enjoying this week’s episode of Volunteer Nation, we invite you to check out the Volunteer Pro Premium Membership. This community is the most comprehensive resource for attracting, engaging, and supporting dedicated high impact volunteer talent for your good cause. 

Volunteer Pro Premium Membership helps you build or renovate an effective what’s working now volunteer program with less stress and more joy. So, you can ditch the overwhelm. And confidently carry your vision forward. And it’s the only implementation program of its kind that helps your organization build maturity across five phases of our proprietary system, the volunteer strategy success path. If you’re interested in learning more, visit volpro.net/join 

Okay, everybody. We’re back with the differences between a paid and volunteer role. Deciding whether a staff role in a nonprofit should be paid for or by a volunteer requires careful consideration. Obviously, we’re considering the legal implications of the Fair Labor Standard Act. 

We’re thinking of tax implications that we want to think about when we’re giving people perks with our income tax code. But we also need to balance our mission, resource limitations, and operational needs, while at the same time, ensuring this legal compliance and maintaining some effectiveness in how we deploy talent. 

I think there’s a little bit of art to it. We got the legal side. I talked about that before the break, but now I want to get into a structured approach, a simple and give you a simple checklist, like I promised on how to think this through. 

Think of a new role that you’re bringing on and just keep it in mind. As we go through this, and you may want to pull out a pen and paper and jot down some notes as I talk through this, but let’s think of a role that you want to bring on board and you’re not sure whether or not it should be a volunteer role or should it be a staff role, an employee role. 

Here’s a structured approach. First, on the one side, we have our volunteer roles. On the other side, we have our employee roles. And if you want, you could even draw out, if you’re, if you’re taking notes, you can draw out two boxes. side by side. So, on the volunteer side, volunteers are around to support sustainability. 

So, that’s the first bullet point. Volunteers are here to support the sustainability of our organization. On the employee side, volunteers are essential. to our sustainability. Yes, volunteers are vital and essential, but if staff were to go away, the organization most, most likely would grind to a halt. Now, I know this doesn’t apply necessarily to all volunteer organizations, of which there are plenty, but these are general guidelines, if you will. 

So, again, there’s an art to this, but I’m hoping it, I’m providing this to help you think it through. So, some of these may or may not apply to your organization. Second bullet point, volunteer roles as you know, per the Department of Labor, they are generally part time, usually supporting shorter term projects, seasonal work, or event teams. 

When those types of team members are needed, it’s a great place to look for volunteers. Now, we do have in many of our organizations ongoing volunteer roles, so it’s not canceling those out. But in general, if you’re thinking about a role, if it’s a project-based role or seasonal or event team based, that’s a great place to plug in volunteers. 

Employee roles are usually longer term, and they’re related to project implementation, oversight, or when development is needed. And the reason that is, is because sometimes you need a consistent person or team of people working on a project for the long term. That’s not to say that volunteers can’t do that, and often do, or not often do, I would say sometimes do. 

But if the project really needs a consistent team to work throughout the project, then it’s better to, I think, or optimal to utilize employees for that type of work. Now again, these are general guidelines and they may not apply to you. Here’s another thing to think about. Volunteer roles are generally more flexible in terms of performance expectations. 

We have a wider range of what success looks like. For some volunteer roles, there’s a high level of accuracy that’s required. Like, let’s say, preparing taxes. Well, of course, we want full on accurate accuracy, right? But with a lot of volunteer roles, there’s a wide range of performance expectations. 

With employees, consistent performance is generally expected. That’s why people get paid. Right? We are expecting consist, a consistent standard of performance that meets specific standards. And if standards are not met, then we’re coaching very heavily and supervising very heavily. So there’s a little bit more wiggle room with our volunteers. 

We’re willing to put more time and energy into coaching. Again, guidelines, not always the way it is at certain organizations. With volunteers, here’s another interesting difference. With volunteers, volunteers are, in general, sort of ethically motivated. This is a value for them, to give back to the community, to make a difference. 

Their motivation is not the same. pay and privileges and promotions, right? It’s more about their values. Now, people who work in the nonprofit sector are also motivated to work in the sector, especially long term because of their value set. I worked my entire career in nonprofit and public sector organizations. 

I never worked corporately. I could have made a lot more money, but my values were really with the sector and what. Um, the organizations I was working with were trying to achieve in the community and it meant something to me as a worker to be part of those, uh, contexts. I’m not saying nonprofit workers don’t have a value set or don’t have an ethic that’s driving their work in the sector, but they are also contractually obligated. 

And so, you know, we’re working, we’re coming to work every day because we’re getting a paycheck and we, we are contractually obligated to be there. Another difference to think about is. Our volunteer roles may require training or internal certification. Our employee roles are more likely to require professional certifications, degrees, and licenses. 

Now, again, that doesn’t mean that for some volunteer roles we do ask for a certain, like, let’s say we had a volunteer CPA that was doing an audit for a non profit. Well, yeah, we’d want somebody with a CPA designation, right? But for the most part, we’re the ones offering the training and certification for our volunteers. 

Again, depending on role, but this kind of helps you think through, this is a way to think through whether or not, should it be a volunteer role or should it be a paid staff role? Just thinking through this rubric. The final thing I would say is volunteer roles must comply with labor laws. And you know what? 

So, should employee roles. They must comply with labor laws. So, the definition of a volunteer. And also tax law. And, uh, compensation. And I’m air quoting compensation for volunteers. Because we don’t really compensate volunteers. But we do sometimes give them gifts of thanks. Right? And sometimes those are taxable. 

So, that’s kind of a structured approach to think, through, should a role be a volunteer role or should it be a, an employee role? Now, I kind of use staff and employee interchangeably, but I would also call out that, you know, I also think that there, it’s worth considering calling everybody staff, that volunteers are staff, paid employees are staff, your interns are staff, uh, You know, your, your contractors are staff. 

Everybody who’s part of the team is considered staff. So, you might want to think about, you know, are we calling volunteers, volunteers and we’re calling employees, employees rather than calling them staff. That’s just a philosophical thing you want to think about. But I like the idea of calling everybody staff because it means that we’re all on the same team and we’re on a level playing field. 

One last thing I want to give you this checklist to really think through and if you have a pad of paper you might want to jot these down but the first question you want to ask is when you’re determining you have this role in front of you you’re thinking it through you’re like well should this be paid employee or should it be a volunteer role let’s ask this these questions okay I’ve got about eight questions for you the first one is does the role fit the definition of volunteer Under your country’s labor laws, now I talked about the U.S. Department of Labor Fair Labor Standards Act, but if you’re in a different country, your laws are probably different. So, does the role fit the definition of a volunteer? And if not, then it’s probably going to need to be a paid staff role. Or paid employee role, I should say. Second thing. Is the role essential to the daily operation or mission critical tasks of the organization? 

So, if someone didn’t show up, would your organization grind to a halt? Or would you not be able at all to provide services? Now again, these are general questions, a yes, no to any of these except the first one. are going to give you ideas on which direction you want to head, but they are not, uh, you know, there’s an art to this. 

Third question, does the role require specialized expertise or professional credentials? So again, you’re thinking, you know, do I require a master’s degree or do I require another type of certification or professional credentials? And that might mean that it’s going to be a paid employee role. Again, general guidelines. 

A fourth question, how consistent and reliable does this role need to be for the organization to succeed? So could you still survive with some ebb and flow of volunteers in these roles, right? Could, do you have flexibility or, does the role need to be reliable? It has to be, you know, has to be on point, has to be there, has to be performing every week, every day. 

How long is the role needed is another question. Long term versus short term. You might want to think about project based roles for volunteers. Nowadays, volunteers are loving flexibility. They’re loving, uh, uh, opportunities where they can dip in and dip out of volunteering. And so it really, You know, a smart organizations will develop roles like that to at least initially engage volunteers. 

And if they love working with you, they will find ways to make time in their calendar for more time with your organization, if they feel like they are really making a difference. So sometimes shorter term projects lead to longer term. engagement with your organization, whether it’s as a donor or longer term volunteer. 

So, I’m a huge fan of shorter-term projects and giving people quick wins. Another question, does the organization risk legal issues by using a volunteer in this role? This kind of goes along with, does it fit the definition of volunteer under your country’s labor laws? So, you want to look carefully because there is always, when you’re bringing on a new role, there’s a bit of a risk assessment, you need to do a little mini risk assessment for that role. 

So, ask that question. And then finally, is the role tied to measurable goals that require accountability, performance management, close supervision on a regular basis? So, if there is a lot riding, a lot riding on this specific role, and it requires a lot of supervision and meeting specific outcomes metrics that may be best for a paid staff role 

If it’s something that requires a lot of close supervision and really high performance, then if it’s a volunteer role, you may find that the resources needed to supervise that role are going to be a pretty heavy lift for folks. Because remember with volunteers, often we have a, uh, a wider, more sort of flexible range of skills and abilities that people are bringing to the table. 

And so we have to be flexible along with that. So, if this role is something that needs to be precise, it needs to be meeting outcomes on a regular basis, then that may not be the best volunteer role. or for your supporters. So take a second look at your org chart. Are there things that you are committing to? 

Bigger picture here. Let’s take a step back and look bigger picture here. Now that we’ve kind of gone through what the differences might be between paid and unpaid roles, take a second look at your org chart. Are there things that you are committing to either for yourself or your team that Paid staff simply don’t have time to take on that. 

They’re always on the to do list, but they never get done. Think about whether or not a volunteer role or a volunteer team could be brought on to help with that. We are in a sector that is uses this refrain all the time. Let’s do more with less. Let’s do more with less. And I have to say, I have to call this out, and I’ve been kind of, on some of our volunteer pro trainings, I’ve been on my soapbox a bit on this, and in the community a bit on this, because people are giving these unfunded mandates all the time. 

Like, hey, I’m sorry, we’re cutting staff, you’re going to have to do more with less. And I, I would call that out as a fantasy, that it’s not possible to do more with less. If you’re only that person doing it now, you can have technology templates, new processes. You can have ways to suddenly become more efficient. 

Certainly AI is helping us become more efficient in terms of copywriting and developing strategy. Um, AI is really starting to make that, that, that work a little bit faster, but if you’re a single person doing your work. and we agree to take on more work without more resources of time or extra help, inevitably something’s going to slip through the cracks and not get done because we’re only human, we’re not, we can’t clone ourselves. 

We can certainly work harder, we can work longer hours, but in the end, we’re going to, it’s a one-way ticket to burnout. So, when we think about this doing more with less, I really encourage folk, and this is just a little editorializing at the end of this pep talk episode as we think about this topic of paid versus unpaid, is when we’re given that unfunded mandate of do more with less. 

I would encourage you to call that out a little bit and say, really, okay, let’s, let’s, let me sketch out the hours and time it would take for me to take on these additional tasks. And as you see, there’s not enough time in the day or the week. So let’s think about, are there ways that we could bring on volunteers? 

I think until we start to challenge this myth of doing more with less, because honestly, without. Um, either we are becoming more efficient, we are using technology or tools to become more efficient, we have new processes to become more efficient. That’s it. We only have so many hours in the day. 

The only other answer is to work more and burn us out. Or think about ways we can engage volunteers to take on some of those, those roles and some of those tasks. Now it may not be that a volunteer is doing exactly and replacing exactly what other staff members might have been doing. Think about it. 

Sure you can work extra time, but is that truly sustainable? Perhaps it is time to expand volunteer roles, especially for organizations that are really trying to do more with less. Let’s try to do more with more. How about that? And make sure there are enough resources and people to recruit those new volunteers and support them properly as well. 

This may be, mean that you’re delegating even more off your plate so that you can make time for the support of volunteers. So there’s some shifting going on, you know, when you’re bringing in new teams and you’re thinking about restructuring, there’s a lot of shifting going on. And this is what we were talking about in our training that I talked about at the top of this podcast episode.   

So I hope this has helped you think about how You are going to categorize your new workers, the roles of your new workers, whether they be paid workers or unpaid workers. And, you know, again, there’s art to it. There’s also some laws that guide us. But in the end, it’s each organization’s. Responsibility to figure out how they do this, but I’m hoping today’s episode really helped you with that. 

So that’s what I’ve got today. I really appreciate all of you listeners joining me today and dialing in. I hope this episode is giving you new ways to think about how you categorize your workers and also. Hope it helps other folks. If you think there’s somebody that could benefit from this, I hope you’ll share it and join us next week. 

Same time, same place, right here on The Volunteer Nation. Bye, everybody.