The Nonprofit FAQ

Can employees of a nonprofit also volunteer their time?

Someone from Wisconsin asked this question in January 1995. Putnam Barber (pbarber@eskimo.com) replied: What I've always heard on this general topic is this: the federal fair labor standards act requires that any employee who is paid for time at work be paid for all time spent at the employer's direction; schemes (or apparent schemes) to evade this requirement are punishable by various penalties including triple-pay to the abused employee, which can be collected almost indefinitely with proper documentation; this right cannot be "waived" by any employer-created process of sign-up sheets or voluntary self-selection. The idea is to call up the spectre in bosses' minds of employees who are secretly documenting unfair requests over years and years, then suddenly showing up with a federal order for back compensation in the thousands of dollars. Large organizations can be so paranoid about this prospect that they punish supervisors who even allow employees to deviate from the standard work hours even when everyone involved is committed to achieving some short-term goal and totally innocent of the above sorts of thoughts. ("That's ok, I'll stay through lunch and get these envelopes stuffed so we can make today's mail for the invitations." I was balled out for letting that happen once! Truth!) If you have a real problem along these lines, I suggest contacting the Wage and Hour branch of the US Department of Labor and getting the published info they have about it, then creating a nonconfrontational way of bringing these rules to everyone's attention. Their roots are in genuine forms of oppression and exploitation. Mission-driven people often miss the extent to which they are at risk of repeating those abuses in the name of some goal "higher" than profits. All this isn't to say that Wisconsin doesn't have some further interest in the matter. I'd check that out too, but I have no idea where you might go for the information. (A public library might have a starting point in some directory of government services). Note May 24, 1998: The United States Department of Labor has an employers' handbook online at http://www.dol.gov/dol/asp/public/programs/handbook/main.htm. It has a section referring to the wage and hour rules which discusses this topic. Reposted with additional information May 24, 1998 --PB