Volunteering By the Hour

I had some time between jobs once and decided that it was time to give back. I wanted to volunteer and so I started looking at different organizations and discovered that most organizations required at least three hours a week for a minimum of six months. It was quite the commitment since being between jobs is kind of an unpredictable thing. I had no idea when my latest job would come around. Then I discovered One Brick. One Brick sets up events that only last a few hours and you only have to sign up for one event at a time. I had already done 9 months at the SFSPCA at this time and was interested in doing something new, but I certainly wasn't ready to commit to six months, so I did a few One Brick events. My first experience was at the San Francisco food bank. The food bank is really well organized so when it gets volunteers, it doesn't mess around. It has everything setup and boom... work until you drop. And there's such a sense of accomplishment at the end.

In today's world of hectic schedules it's pretty hard to give back time if you work full time. Is One Brick and organizations like it, the future of volunteering? My niece had to do 100 hours of volunteer work before she could graduate from high school. Could there possibly be a time when we would have to do volunteer work? What if as part of our taxes we all had to report 50 hours of volunteer work per year to get special exemptions? Would the majority of people choose to do the volunteer work or would they opt-out for some paying some kind of tax?