When is charity work justified?

[Ian Davlin The Looth Group]

Even though time equals money, I would think about it in terms of time. Do you have the time for charity work? If you’re working out of your house and your overhead is low, you might have time for some pro bono work here and there. If you have a brick and mortar, I have no idea how anyone, other than Doug Proper, could have any time left over for free, or reduced fee work. How much of your months allotment of time is spent getting out of the hole of rent and utilities ? A week maybe ?

[Doug Proper Guitar Specialist]

Hi Thomas,

I think that is a great question. There’s a lot to chew on there. I would challenge the notion that being a “good capitalist” is somehow mutually exclusive to doing good. I think they go hand in hand. After all some of the most notable capitalists in history were also among the most generous altruists that ever existed. Think of people like Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Melon, John D Rockefeller. Furthermore, most of those men and countless others didn’t wait until they were successful before doing good was an option. It went hand-in-glove with their success.

We do a lot of what Ian is calling pro-bono work. We always have. It has been part and parcel of our success and our business model from the beginning. For us, it has always been important that when we chose to do free, or reduced fee work that we did so in ways that aligned with our values. In our case that meant that we looked for opportunities to exercise those “charity muscles”. When we came across people we identified as someone in need of our services that aligned with our values, we would leap at the opportunity to help. For us that means active-duty military members, members of the clergy or religious organizations, individuals who are struggling with life circumstances – be it health related or life related.

You would be surprised how often life presents opportunities to exercise those “charity muscles” just while running your shop – In fact we have rarely had to seek out opportunities to do so. All it takes is the awareness to listen to your customers as you meet with them and the opportunities to do good invariably always present themselves if you are receptive to it.

I would like to stress one thing – “Charity begins at home”. We have all heard that colloquialism time and again. A lot of people misinterpret that as a phrase with a sense of selfishness. That you take care of yourself before you look to help others. I think that definition is wrong. In our shop, that means you have to run your business in such a way as to ensure the profitability it takes to afford to be charitable as part of your business model. It takes work and planning. An attentiveness to the day-to-day accounting, time management practices, pricing structure, expense management and all of the other things to ensure profitability and the ability to be generous within the operation of your shop as to allow for the ”room in the budget” to be charitable as part of your business model.

Yes, “Time Equals Money”. However, I would challenge the notion that you have to wait until you have the time (or the money) in order to be charitable. It has been part of our business model from the beginning and there has always been room to do it. It didn’t matter whether we were working out of our house – which we did for more than a decade when we were at the beginning of this journey – or when we, later moved into a commercial space. If it is important for you to do so, I would suggest that rather than think it from the perspective of waiting and wondering if you “have the time” to shifting your thinking to “making the time”. It is easy to start small and build from there.

To be clear – this is very personal. If it is important to you to be charitable within the context of providing the service that you do in your shop, then run your shop in a way that you can afford to do so. That means being profitable – that after all is where charity comes from. True capitalism means doing well so you can do good.

One last thing that comes to mind while I am typing this is – that for us, this is a very private matter of importance to us. We have done quite a lot of pro-bono work and continue to do so – we don’t post about it on Instagram, send out press releases or shout it from the rooftop. If fact, this is probably the only time I have ever addressed the subject in a public way – and very likely it might be the last time. Your question struck a chord with me and I felt strongly about addressing it.

[Mitch Rice]

I’ve been working on fretted instrument’s about 5 1/2 years so I’m pretty new. I started off helping a friend who was only putting together Tele(parts)casters. When I needed to get away from him (personality disorder, not healthy) I decided the best way to expand my abilities was to find / purchase / donation’s, learn the work and then donate them to underserved organizations or individual’s. Since then I’ve donated almost 90 instruments to places such as Ronald McDonald House, Guitars 4 Vets, Jail Guitar Doors, Homeless Vets in Inglewood, Ca., Safe Place For Youth, 3 different locations for the Venice Family Clinic, Harmony Project LA, a local mom and pop for their rental program, multiple school music programs, Collage – a place for art and culture located in San Pedro, Ca and numerous individual’s. Many instruments were entry-level or student grade but a small number of them had real monetary value. The guitar’s are not given away unless they are in excellent playable condition. A couple have had neck-resets but that procedure is still in the learning stages. I don’t have the place or experience to do restoration work. Feels great to give them away and make someone’s day. The majority of the work I do though is client paid.

[Bryan Parris Parris Guitars]

Most everything I’ve done has been for kids. Ex: A kid will come in with his single mom. it’s ready for the trash, but he brings it in for “a new string” because one is missing. I tell him it needs a whole set and charge him $20, but I might actually do a full-setup, an electronics repair, etc. He gets a guitar that he can actually learn on, feels like he invested a little to get it, but never knows he actually got $150 worth of work. I’ve also fixed guitars for a middle school band program that owns a few that the students use.

Another fun one was a Yamaha acoustic I fixed up for a remote church in Nicaragua. The guitar was donated but needed work. It also needed a case because it had to be checked on an airplane. Guitar Center sold me a TSA acoustic case for cost and a friend I knew got it into the country. When they sent me the pic of the guitar in it’s final destination, it had been delivered by motorcyle. That was cool and rewarding. I just feel like using my abilities to put music where it wouldn’t otherwise be is worth a little of my time and money. Here’s the pic from Nicaragua.