PTV: Paid Time Volunteering
Written by 5ivecanons Staff
Even with a four-day workweek at our creative agency, between being a parent to kids or fur babies and just keeping up with the world – volunteering can become something we want to do but just can’t find the time for.
I get it. There’s always something. A PHP Zero-day hack, kids have sports or you’ve promised to go to Spirit Halloween, and somehow the week is already over.
But making time for our community matters, especially right now. Everything is fucking expensive. Politics is exhausting. AI is changing how we work, how we communicate, and sometimes whether we even know if a person wrote what we’re reading – including this blog about community, paid time to help, written by a bald creative with a couple fake teeth.
It’s a lot. And for me, getting away from the web, from the regroups, from the meetings, and being a part of something in our community fills the void.
I just took some paid volunteer time from 5ivecanons to be a VIP observer at the Triennial Aviation Disaster Exercise at Jacksonville International Airport. I was wholeheartedly amazed at how organized the event was, how real it could feel on the ground, and really how dedicated the actors playing injured passengers were.
I legit watched one woman screaming to a paramedic, “Don’t leave me here!”
You know it’s an exercise. You know the wounds are makeup. But standing in the middle of an international airport’s runway on a Wednesday morning, watching all of this happen around you, feels like being in a different world.
Later, we watched the Family Assistance Center portion of the exercise, where volunteers played friends and family members trying to find out what happened to their loved ones. Another opportunity to see how much care, coordination, and preparation goes into responding to a disaster.
The American Red Cross, Jacksonville Aviation Authority, fire and rescue departments, law enforcement, airlines, hospitals, and so many others were involved. All these people, from different organizations, taking the time to practice working together for something we hope never happens.
Inspiring and fulfilling.
It also got me thinking about how much happens in our community that most of us never get to see. People preparing, volunteering, training, and showing up so someone else has help when they need it.
We depend on that. And those organizations depend on people continuing to get involved.
With the cost of everything going up, donating money isn’t always an option. But maybe we have a few hours, a skill someone could use, or a relationship that could help open a door. Running a creative agency, I’ve learned that something straightforward for our team can be a pretty big help to an organization without those resources.
And with how divided everything can feel, there’s something good about spending time with people working toward the same thing. You get to know someone through what they do and how they treat people. There’s a lot of value in that.
I’m excited about what AI can help us do. I’m also terrified. And we’re working through these opportunities, training humans and machines to consume and create together. But I also want us to make time to leave our desks, meet people, and understand what’s happening around us. If technology helps us get some of our time back, I think our community deserves some of it.
That’s where paid volunteer time comes in. PTV, in addition to PTO. And what’s wild to me that four-day workweek allows me to be a Board member for a number of nonprofits, to be there for my children’s performances, to clean the house a bit and cut the yard a day early, but it’s just not enough time. There never is. And I can’t render time back, or speed up the creative process. In fact, the older and balder I get, the slower that process is, the more refined, the more skeptical, the more centered the render becomes. Community grounds me, and we are a part of it, whether I work from home or not.
Adam Schaffer
Chief Creative Officer
