In August 2024, I started to track my personal-interest and volunteer time using the IPOOG time tracking tool. 472.25 ‘Interest Hours’ later tracking time has proven to be beneficial for not only the nonprofits I volunteer for but to also make sure I am spending my retirement on projects of greatest interest to me.
In August of 2024, I committed to using the time tracking tool within the IPOOG tool. As a reminder, IPOOG is a methodology designed for nonprofits. It has five elements, an overarching graphic, Planning, Risk, Content/Process, and Human Resource Management.
IPOOG stands for the Inputs, Processes, Outputs, Outcomes, and Governance of the organization (IPOOG). Inputs includes volunteer hours which is where the time tracking tool comes in.
Lost in Time
A volunteer taking tickets at an event has a defined activity for a specific number of hours. The volunteer on the board of that same event may have spent the last year answering emails, reading/writing reports, reviewing grant applications, or talking to staff and volunteers. These are important hours but which can quickly be lost.
Another scenario is a volunteer organizing a cycling trip in Japan. Research and route planning may take dozens if not hundreds of hours of effort.
Both volunteers (the board member and tour-leader) are not recording their time. However, finding someone to do these roles is more difficult than recruiting a ticket taker for few hours.
Follow the (Volunteer) Money
Beyond the importance of the latter two volunteers, there may be a monetary value as well. Most granting or funding organizations accept volunteer hours donated labour. For example, the Alberta Community Initiatives Program (CIP) requires volunteers to [1]:
- Tracked by date, type of activity, number of hours, skill level, contact information, and volunteer’s signature.
- Actual Volunteer Sign-In Sheet must be provided when requested for verification by the CIP.
- Apply a monetary value based on:
- $20/hour for unskilled labour working directly on the project
- $35/hour for skilled labour (qualified trades and professionals specific to the donated work performed (e.g., professional photographers, artists, and certified referees).
- $70/hour for heavy equipment (including operator costs)
A ticket taker doing a two-hour shift has donated, according to the CIP Grant, (2h x $20 = ) $40. The trip leader who has spent 100-hours researching the trip to Japan has donated… $0 – unless this time is recorded. If the time is recorded, then the value of the donated hours rises to $2,000 ($20 x 100 hours) [2].
Beyond reporting to funders, recording where the time went has benefits to the individual. For example, asking, is what they really want to be doing or how best to automate very manual processes. These were things I discovered in tracking IPOOG time.
How I Spent my Summer (and Fall) Vacation / Retirement
The latter half of 2024 was a watershed moment for me as for the first time in my adult life, I was neither working nor looking for work. So what did I do with this free time… ummm, I worked.
Okay, I worked on my own projects. I set aside the fall to put more time into a writing project called YEGVille.ca – self-propelled adventures about 2-hours from Edmonton. I am on the board of the Stewards of Alberta’s Protected Areas Association (SAPAA). This organization was undertaking an aggressive re-visioning of its role in supporting the provincial protected areas. As the architect of this vision, I needed to provide the horsepower. Staying with SAPAA, I also visited 25 sites (all in combination with YEGVille.ca). Finally, there was some other volunteer work.
Interest (in) Hours
In total I have recorded 472.25 ‘Interest Hours’. Not all are volunteer hours because some are for personal interests, such as YEGVille.ca. The following table provides a break down.
Using the unskilled hourly rated allowed for CIP Grants, SAPAA and other nonprofits could potentially claim upwards of $5,100 of donated labour. Given the nature of the work that I was doing; writing strategy, setting up computer systems, analyzing mergers; a $35/h rate would be more appropriate increasing the donated labour to nearly $9,000.
Auditing Donated Labour
If you were an analyst working for the Government of Alberta (GoA), you may balk at accepting $9,000 against a grant. SHOW ME the sign in sheet you might say.
The following are the detailed records for one of the items making up the above values. This was work done to support a CBC reporter who was doing a story on SAPAA. It included preparation time, an interview, and creating follow up material [3].
Is there a sign in sheet? No, but the above records should suffice. It would be incumbent upon the analyst to dispute the entries (e.g. it should only take 1.75 hours to research and write a background document). Asking for the details and disputing the entries are both extremely unlikely.
Beyond Volunteering
I have been thinking about the ‘YEGVille Trail Guide’ for about 10 years. This is the first time that I spent concerted time and effort doing field research. A side benefit of tracking my time is to know exactly what I am getting myself into.
This is the site visit map. I am estimating there are about 500 places to go within the indicated borders. If I add in cycling and paddling trips, the number may rise as high as 1,000.
By tracking my time, I now have an estimate of how long this retirement-project is going to take. Each site takes about two elapsed days (not effort days) [4]. Worse still, as I visit the site, I might discover that return visits are needed. This was the case with Coyote Lake where there are six distinct parcels of land to visit.
Re-Thinking YEGVille.ca
As a retirement project, I have decided to not monetize YEGVille.ca. Instead, it will be a personal travel-log. While this means giving up on an idea 10-years in the making, it also means that I don’t spend the next ~5-years doing nothing but YEGVille.ca. I enjoy exploring but there are other projects!
What is Next for IPOOG?
I have decided to keep IPOOG’ing for 2025. It is not onerous to do (remembering to record the time) and it is a good annual memory jog of what you exactly worked on. Will I be the only IPOOG’er in the universe? Maybe but I at least know where the time has gone.
One last graphic of IPOOG 2024 – long live IPOOG 2025. This one shows a break down of interests across the individual months.
Notes and References
- Community Initiatives Program (CIP) Project-Based, accessed 2025-01-05.
- $20 agrees with an analysis I did a few years back in the post, The Burden of Volunteering. It only records half the contributed value. If there is NOT a volunteer and the organization needs buy the services, then they need a cash donation of $20 per hour. My suggestion, for internal purposes, cost the contributed value of all volunteers at $50 (A nice round number).
- See CBC Story – Volunteer Stewardship Program | SAPAA accessed 2025-01-05.
- An effort hour is how long doing something noting that the time may not be contiguous. You might spend an hour today, 2-hours tomorrow, and 30-minutes next week for a total of 3.5 hours. Duration or elapsed time is the time frame the above fits into. Driving out to Coyote Lake, exploring and driving home kills a day. Processing the photos and writing up the reports is another half to full day – thus two elapsed days even if the effort is only 6-10 hours.
Further Reading
The following is the complete set of IPOOG posts starting with the initial application in support of the Birkie Business Model.
Organizational Biology 