Volunteer to Make Money

Charity is supposed to be simple. You, in plenty, give; someone, in need, receives. You're hopefully a slightly better person as a result, God gives you a tip of the hat, and the individual receiving can lead a slightly better life afterward. The more you give the better, but every little bit helps. If you don't have money you can give time. Nobody wants your old frumpy clothes. See? Easy peasy.

One part of giving that seems to commonly confound is absolute giving versus relative giving. Should Mitt Romney be praised for giving millions of dollars to charity ($7 million over two years) or should we shrug that he simply gave just above the minimum required of him by his church and only a small portion of his enormous yearly income (16%)? And what should be done of Newt Gingrich who managed despite his professing of Christian values to give only a little over 2% of his similarly impressive intake ($3.1 million)? I'm sure in Mitt's case the rest of the money went to creating jobs and in Newt's well, shucks, he would have given more had he not been loving his country so hard. 

The uninspiring compassion of our politicians aside, I have recently come upon another problem of sorts. As I step further and further down the path to full blown, fully independent doctorhood I am finding it easier and easier to fill my pockets with cash. Cash being cash it is thankfully liquid. It's readily transferable to whichever charitable organization I fancy at the moment and cash in general has undoubtedly built many houses for veteran, one-legged snow owls down on their luck recovering from addiction. The ease with which money comes into my possession, however, has this year reached a critical level. I have arguably passed the point where it no longer makes sense to volunteer.

Now being board certified and fully licensed I have the opportunity to moonlight. I can sign up to work a weekend or night shift as a general internist for an hourly wage. And the currently reported going rate at our hospital: $100 an hour. A twelve hour shift can net you over a thousand dollars. If I were to then donate that to the local food bank for the poor and penniless they could buy chili mac for everyone. Even have enough left over probably to upgrade to frito pies. Heck, if I worked a few shifts they could even buy puppies and milkshakes for everyone. Milkshakes for the puppies too, why not. More pertinent to the point, were I instead to volunteer at the food bank making the same chili mac myself for those same twelve hours I'd arguably have only made twelve hours worth of someone else's donated chili mac. From a slightly different but purely economical -- and perhaps relatively dispassionate -- standpoint for every hour I moonlight I could hire ten individuals $10/hr to make ten times as much chili mac in the exact same time. My choice not to volunteer's friggin' creating jobs now! How then does it make sense sense to ever volunteer for anything else? To tutor a child is simply an inefficient waste of time.

Unfortunately where as I used to obtain a quiet satisfaction from sorting canned goods from boxed cereals I hate the very idea of moonlighting. I do not believe I'd obtain any joy from spending my evening sitting in the ED admitting people for chest pain rule outs. And there in of course lies the problem, charity is not supposed to be about the giver. It's arguably not even supposed to be about the gift itself either, yet the thought of volunteering to dig a ditch rather than volunteering to pay a team of ditch diggers just because it makes me happier seems selfish even if they are both acts of charity. Moonlighting is arguably one of the most generous things I could do right now and yet I still have no desire to do it. Paper Bird would be so disappointed.



Speaking of Paper Bird, here, finally, is a picture. He denotes all his money to charity. What a guy.