Sign me up! (Week 37)

"Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth."

It was impossible not to listen when Muhammad Ali spoke. So I heeded his wise words about volunteering during a week spent in service to others.

I'm going to start by telling you about a company called Benevity. Besides being my employer for the past 4 years, it's also my constant source of inspiration. We're in the business of developing "goodness software," which allows people to make donations to the charities of their choice through their employer. They can also volunteer their time and get rewarded. In our case, we earn donation currency valued at $20 per hour for our volunteer work, which we can then use to donate to any charity we want. It's pretty much the ultimate win-win.

Putting in the occasional volunteer shift is fairly easy. A lot of people do. In fact, more than 4 in 10 Canadians volunteer for a charity at least once a year. I'm guessing there aren't that many who volunteer every day, though. As I discovered, it's actually quite tough just to get the shifts.

I started with a Victoria non-profit called Our Place, a local homeless centre. Benevity had sponsored a hot breakfast, so the week began with a 6:30am shift with a bunch of my co-workers, serving French toast, bacon and fruit to more than 300 guests over a two-hour span. Something special happens when you feed people—there's an instant connection that comes with this simplest of acts.

Still, that was just one day. I needed more. Luckily, Our Place had it for me. I got on the call-up list, and quickly picked up a bunch of shifts in the hygiene area. It's where guests can come in the evening to get a shower, and my job was to hand them the towels and soap, and clean the shower spaces after. Suddenly, volunteering had taken on a grittier edge. The thanks and appreciation was overwhelming, though, and that more than makes up for it. Pinned to the door was this note from a woman: "I've been homeless for a year and without the volunteers in the hygiene department, I would be lost." That's powerfully re-affirming stuff.

My last volunteer shift of the week was the most fun. If you've been reading my blog, you know I'm a huge bike nerd. Turns out, Our Place has a monthly bike maintenance workshop, where handy volunteers work with a mobile bike shop called VeloFix to repair and maintain guests' bikes. Over the course of my two-hour shift, I replaced faulty brake pads, fixed four flat tires, repaired a wonky shifter and oiled many squeaky chains. What's the good of learning all this stuff if you only ever do it for yourself, right?

After a week of volunteering at Our Place, I had clocked 10 hours, all duly recorded in our software. That translated to $200 in rewards, which went directly in my "giving account." So I just put the money right back into Our Place Society, which means my goodness was amplified times two.

I know volunteering is not everyone's bag. But it probably should be, and for good reasons. Sure, it can be a boost to your career, but there are so many other great reasons to do it: meeting new friends, giving back to your community and bringing greater joy and fulfillment to your life.

Like many of our clients (which include Apple, Google, Microsoft and many other huge blue chippers) we get active in a lot of different volunteer ways at Benevity Victoria, and even more so at our head office in Calgary. Every 56 days, a team heads off to the blood donor clinic to give the gift of life. We regularly join the Green Teams of Canada crew to remove invasive plant species, restore fragile parkland and clean up shorelines. And that's just the tip of it, because there are opportunities popping up daily that offer a variety of volunteering goodness. We even earned volunteer rewards for taking part in the Climate Strike. Figure that one out. Companies who grasp the enormity of the climate situation are actually willing to pay their people NOT to come to work!

Ain't gonna lie. After a week of donating my time every day, I was pretty exhausted. But the satisfaction I got from being truly helpful more than made up for it. And hey, I can catch up any time with all the binge-watching I missed out on. I may not keep up the pace of that week, but I am going to keep pursuing the spirit of it.

As Ali might have said, the rent is always due.

NEXT WEEK: Hydrating like a fiend!