Tag Archives: volunteering

Should I volunteer when my business is established?

Many editors and proofreaders volunteer time and skills at the beginning of their careers to gain valuable experience that might lead to paid work. But once you’re established in your business, with a regular client base, what are the benefits of volunteering? We talked to some CIEP members to find out how volunteering works in a more settled career landscape. In a previous blog, we looked at volunteering when you’re just starting out, and covered the questions you need to ask yourself before giving away your valuable time.

In this article, we’ll cover:

  • Value-led volunteering
  • Making yourself useful
  • Helping colleagues out
  • Supporting the wider editorial community
  • Reaching across the earth
  • Giving back

Value-led volunteering

All volunteering is value-led to an extent, but for some of our members their values are the deciding factor in working out what volunteering work to take on.

CIEP Professional Member Ben Dare says: ‘I have offered voluntary proofreading to a number of organisations that I knew were either volunteer-led or had very restricted budgets. I thought that all of them were interesting or aligned with my values.’

In the end, some of this value-led voluntary work turned into value-led paid work:

  • One turned into a counter-offer of a few hours a week of paid work.
  • One connected Ben with a publisher’s editorial assistant, also volunteering, who connected him with their publisher. That turned into a number of proofreads, Ben’s first copyedits, and an ongoing relationship with the publisher.
  • One organisation incorporated Ben’s work into their funding applications so that they could start paying him for his work on their projects.
  • One remained a voluntary role, but it was fun and meaningful.
  • One remained voluntary with a paid project in the middle and the possibility of more in future.

Ben continues: ‘I also offered to do an unpaid proofread for a few charities when Covid was at its peak, knowing that finances were so uncertain, but also not expecting it to remain voluntary for future projects.’

  • One insisted they pay and sent a few projects Ben’s way.
  • One took a voluntary proofread and continues to follow up with paid projects, and referred Ben to another client.
  • One took a voluntary proofread and continues to follow up with paid projects.

Even with this impressive return, and a client base that increasingly reflects his values, Ben consistently offers a certain proportion of his hours for free. From his records, he has noticed that his percentage of voluntary hours has remained at around 10%. He says:

While I’d obviously have been better off had all those voluntary hours been paid, it’s not a big portion on paper. The important thing is that I only offered voluntary proofreading where I thought there was a need, and when I knew I would be satisfied doing the work, paid or not.

Making yourself useful

Some people volunteer long term for one organisation when there is absolutely no chance of ever being paid for it. Editing church or other faith-based magazines is a good example of this. CIEP Intermediate Member Annie Deakins has been volunteering for her monthly parish magazine since 2017. Her account of how this has benefited her, giving her skills that have helped her wider career, echoes the experiences of some of our newer members:

2017: I offered to proofread the monthly parish magazine for the local church. I was an Entry-Level member. I learnt how to use the PDF tools.

2018: The magazine editor retired, so she trained me to take over. I learnt about having a style sheet.

2019: A new church administrator was appointed. Her job role was tightened, so I took over invoicing the advertisers. I placed my own advert for proofreading services. I learnt about communication, diplomacy and tact. Very handy when querying.

2020: The vicar got promoted. She had done all the church social media. She taught me how to do it. I learnt how to market my own business.

There’s no denying that volunteering will push you towards skills and knowhow that you might not feel comfortable trialling in a paid role. However, for Annie, it’s also about offering a talent that’s genuinely useful to others:

I still volunteer with the Publicity Group at church because that is where my talents lie. I’m not happy doing catering, DIY or Finance. Therefore I do the church social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) and edit the church magazine.

During lockdown, when we weren’t sending the magazine to print, I still produced an online PDF version, accessible from the church website. Usually the magazine is printed in black and white with a colour cover. During lockdown, when it was online only, the illustrations on each page could be in colour, which made each issue cheerier and raised spirits. Even if they didn’t have the hard copy in their hands, I still felt that my volunteering was valued.

Helping colleagues out

Kath Kirk (Gecko Edit) and Christina Petrides (Last Glance), both Intermediate Members of the CIEP, trade their skills by editing each other’s blogs before publication. Working in different sectors – Kath edits fiction and educational materials while Christina focuses on academic and business editing – there’s rarely overlap in their blog material. Their informal barter arrangement benefits them both, and pushes them to dig into aspects of editing that they might not encounter in their usual work.

Sue Littleford, our columnist on business matters, explains how this arrangement works tax-wise:

If you swap proofreading services with a friend for your blogs or your websites, you need to enter the cash value of the services received and rendered in your accounts, too. If they balance, it’s ‘free’ in monetary terms (other than your time), as the tax liability will exactly offset the tax relief. But if you spend one hour on your friend’s blog and your friend spends two on yours, there’d be greater tax relief than the tax liability (and vice versa), which is why it has to go through your accounts.

Supporting the wider editorial community

As a non-profit organisation, the CIEP relies on voluntary help. Its directors give a certain number of hours voluntarily every month, for example. Our social media team (SMT) is made up of volunteers, too. Obviously we have to keep the names of these ninja-like communicators secret, but one comments:

I’ve learnt about tone of voice, and tweeting for the CIEP has sharpened my copywriting skills. Being a member of the team has thrown me together with CIEP members with similar interests, eg in content marketing and user design. I feel I better understand engagement, and I’ve learnt how to write for the different social media platforms. All really useful for my business. And when I was starting out, I learnt about loads of interesting organisations in the publishing world by seeing who the CIEP follows on Twitter etc.

Another says: ‘I think it’s contributed to my appreciation of the wider industry. This can be a solitary old existence, so the team itself is a benefit. In terms of specific skills: awareness of use of appropriate language (gender-neutral pronouns!) and improved skills with web platforms, Slack, SmarterQueue, which is all very useful.’

Louise Harnby, the CIEP’s social media director (at the time of writing), testifies to the value of her team:

I work with an exceptional team of volunteers who deliver every piece of content that engages with the wider publishing and editing community. That frees up my time to focus on strategy and scheduling content that promotes membership growth, training, blog content, and our Directory of Editorial Services.

A team approach ensures the CIEP’s social media strategy is framed in a way that reaches beyond the bubble of a single director. Instead, there’s a support group in which we can share ideas about how best to put the strategy into practice – whether that be the design of our branded templates or the timing of our posts. Plus, there’s more than one set of eyes on our social media feeds and the questions our followers are asking. That’s more enjoyable and more effective.

Being a member of the SMT requires being able to write pithy messages that are engaging but hold our brand tone of voice, understand the principles behind content and social media marketing, and evaluate a post’s relevance and its alignment with CIEP values. For that reason, our volunteer editors and proofreaders tend to have some experience when they come on board.

Over the past few years the size of the SMT has decreased. But what’s stayed the same is the value and expertise our volunteers bring to the table. I love working with them and learning from them. And I’m very thankful for them! Delivering our social media strategy would be impossible without them.

Reaching across the earth

CIEP Professional Member Sarah Dronfield has become known among editors worldwide for running weekly blog round-ups on the Editors’ Association of Earth Facebook Page. She became a member of the editing community on Facebook soon after starting her editing and proofreading business in 2016, and explains how she spotted a need:

Lots of editors were saying that they read blog posts or listened to podcasts as part of their continuing professional development. I knew it was possible to follow individual blogs, but I thought it would be handy for us to have all the latest posts in one place to dip in and out of during coffee breaks, so in 2017 I started a weekly blog round-up in the Editors’ Association of Earth (EAE) Facebook group.

Later that year I took over the running of the weekly accountability thread in another of the EAE groups. That thread is a place for editors to share what they’ve done that week to market their business or advance their professional development. Many editors form their own private accountability groups with others who are at a similar stage in their career or who work in the same field, and the thread is useful for those who are not part of such a group. Having said that, I know lots of editors (myself included) who are in a private accountability group but still like to participate in the weekly EAE thread!

Posting these weekly threads makes me feel like I’m giving something back to the community that helped me so much when I was starting out. It also gives me a routine and a sense of normality that is essential these days.

Giving back

So, why do they do it? At this point in these professionals’ careers, their motivation isn’t so much future employment but adding something to their working lives. Volunteering can lead to work, but often it’s something that runs regularly alongside work, taking up a fairly predictable amount of time. It’s a way of getting CPD and forming new contacts as well as gaining satisfaction from helping in a way that’s consistent with their values. They’re giving something back, which may in time encourage others to do the same.

Do you volunteer? What do you do, and why? Let us know in the comments below!

Written by the CIEP information team. With thanks to the CIEP members who generously shared their experiences.

About the CIEP information team

Abi Saffrey, Liz Jones, Margaret Hunter, Cathy Tingle

Liz Jones, Abi Saffrey and Cathy Tingle are the CIEP’s information commissioning editors. If there’s a topic that you would like to see covered in a blog post, fact sheet, focus paper or guide, drop the team a line at infoteam@ciep.uk.

 

 

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.

Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: tree by Brandon Green; Why Not? by Ian Dziuk; sprout by Sushobhan Badhai, all on Unsplash.

Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Should I volunteer when I’m starting out?

Wherever you are in your editing or proofreading career, taking on voluntary work can benefit you and others. But, as many who have done it will tell you, it’s not without its snares and snags. With the help of some generous CIEP members who have shared their experiences, in this article we’ll look at how volunteering can work when you’re starting out. We’ll also suggest some questions that you should ask yourself before you start offering your valuable time for free. In a future CIEP blog, we’ll look at how volunteering works when you’re established in your editing or proofreading career.

Below we’ll cover:

  • Discovering a taste for what you enjoy
  • Learning with less pressure
  • Declaring yourself
  • Getting your foot in the door
  • Using voluntary work for membership upgrades
  • Four questions to ask yourself before you volunteer

Discovering a taste for what you enjoy

Unpaid work is the way that many proofreaders and editors start – in fact, it can be how they realise they have an aptitude and enthusiasm for what will later become their career. Perhaps a friend, knowing you’re good with words, asks you to check the grammar and punctuation in their thesis, and halfway through you think: ‘I’m really enjoying this!’

Learning with less pressure

Once you’ve done your basic training, volunteering can help you test your new editing or proofreading skills and learn a few more without the stresses that could come from being paid. One of our members described the voluntary jobs she had taken on since completing her CIEP Proofreading courses – proofreading two series of short stories, some poetry and three website articles – and the impressive set of new and improved skills she acquired in the process:

  • increasing her competence and confidence in using Track Changes and Find and Replace, and starting to explore Word Styles
  • learning how to save a web page as a PDF, and practising using the Adobe Comments tools
  • using PerfectIt and other macros for the first time
  • compiling a style sheet to use as a template
  • keeping a record of time spent and work carried out, which helped her calculate her average proofreading speeds.

This member has appreciated the time and space that volunteering allows for growing into a new career:

I am finding this period of focusing on voluntary work to be hugely beneficial. With each job I develop new skills or learn about new tools which I can incorporate into my practice. As an Entry-Level Member, I like not having the pressure of being paid – for now!

At the same time, however, she hasn’t lost sight of the ultimate plan – to get paid work:

I am also building up a little bank of testimonials which I can use on my website, and at least two of the clients have said they will recommend me to friends and colleagues.

Declaring yourself

Sometimes you might be volunteering in a different arena from editing and proofreading, but if you tell the people you meet what you usually do for a living, more relevant volunteering work could come your way. One member says:

My daughter is a pharmacy dispensing technician at a village medical centre near to us. During the summer of last year, they were looking for volunteers to step up and help manage visitors attending for their flu jab, along with those attending for other medical appointments and pharmacy collections. Always happy to help out, up went my hand, into which was promptly thrust a high-vis jacket.

When asked what I would normally be doing, I was happy to tell folks that I’m a novice proofreader and occasional copywriter. The next thing I knew, my lovely daughter came home from work with a bottle of red in one hand and the medical centre’s newly penned ‘Team Handbook’ in the other.

Always remember, though, that if you’re accepting ‘payment in kind’, such as wine, you need to declare yourself to the tax office, too. Sue Littleford, our columnist on business matters, explains:

Had the CIEP member’s bottle of red wine been handed over for some proofreading, it would have been a ‘payment in kind’ and yes, it’s taxable. He’d have had to put the cash value of the wine in his accounts.

Getting your foot in the door

Getting paid in wine, or cake/casseroles/bedding plants if any of those are more your thing, is great, but at some point you’ll need to get some paying clients. One member described how this happened for her:

When my youngest was a baby (2012), I was involved with my local NCT branch. I worked with the newsletter team, and somehow took on the role of getting 700+ printed copies of this booklet distributed to local members every quarter!

I carried on proofreading for the branch long after I’d left my NCT days behind. It was only about five hours’ work a quarter, but it was great experience and something regular to look forward to while I was starting out.

Then last year, someone I knew from that time contacted me through LinkedIn. She remembered what I’d done with the NCT newsletter and thought I’d be a perfect fit for a project she was leading on at work. I’ve now had 8–9 months of consultancy work through this company on two different projects, helping me towards my most profitable year by far!

It’s not going to work quite like that for everyone every time, and this won’t last forever for me. But I do think that doing those little jobs on a voluntary basis can sow the seeds in people’s minds, and you never know when they might need you for something different (and paid). It shows people what you can do and how you work, and they’ll remember that.

Another member says:

When I started my freelance proofreading business last July, I contacted many companies and charities offering my services for free in exchange for a testimonial, as I felt this was the best way to gain experience and also increase my exposure in the form of having recommendations to hand.

I had a few positive responses, one of which was from Kathy Bishop, the editor of the Catholic magazine The Faith Companion.

Kathy’s initial response was that she would be happy to help me out as everyone ‘needs a helping hand’, and that she would send me a couple of articles to work on for the next issue, but she wanted to make it clear that they weren’t looking to take anyone on. I replied saying that wasn’t a problem at all, I was just happy with the opportunity to gain some experience and increase my hours.

I now have The Faith Companion as a regular client for the foreseeable future, and I really don’t think this would have happened if I hadn’t originally offered my services on a voluntary basis.

Using voluntary work for membership upgrades

Can voluntary hours count towards a CIEP membership upgrade? They can, if you’re using certain core skills and applying for a certain level. Professional standards director Lucy Metzger says:

For someone seeking an Intermediate Member (IM) grade, it’s fine for some or all of their 100 hours of work experience to be voluntary, and we wouldn’t expect it to be done for a traditional publisher. Some paid proofreading or copyediting work would strengthen the IM application overall, but it’s not a requirement.

However, in order for volunteer work to be counted in an IM application, it still needs to be work using what we call our ‘core skills’ – proofreading and/or copyediting. If a person’s voluntary work has included non-editorial tasks, as well as some core skills work, we would count only the number of hours using the core skills.

For upgrading to Professional (PM) or Advanced Professional (APM), the core skills work experience needs to be for publishers who understand the standards we are looking for in the core skills. If the work is for another body whose core business isn’t publishing (a ‘non-publisher’) the applicant’s experience can be validated by passing the Institute’s editorial test. If a previous application for IM relied mostly on voluntary hours, those hours would most likely be for non-publishers, which would count in a later application for PM or APM only with a test pass, demonstrating that the applicant had the required level of expertise in the core skills.

Four questions to ask yourself before you volunteer

So far, so good, then. However, there are some important questions to ask yourself before you take the plunge and offer your services for free. These questions are taken from an archived blog about volunteering written by a previous blog coordinator, Tracey Roberts.

1. Who should you volunteer with?

Not all charities or non-profit organisations need free help, so do your homework: ‘many charities have healthy budgets’, as Tracey points out. You could follow your interests, and volunteer to proofread or edit something in the fields of gardening, poetry, politics, sport or history, for example. There may be a newsletter for a club or organisation you belong to that you could help with. Some of our members edit their local church magazine.

2. What will you get out of it?

‘This is important,’ says Tracey. ‘If the person or organisation you are volunteering for doesn’t know what’s required of a good editor or proofreader, how valuable will their testimonial really be?’ Tracey makes another very valid point which touches on an aspect that many editors and proofreaders have been burned by: ‘Working for a client (or especially a friend) who doesn’t understand the process (and while you are still learning yourself) could turn into a tricky or negative experience.’ So make sure you go in with open eyes.

3. What skills do you want to practise?

If you want to work in fiction editing, look for experience there. If your aim is to be a scientific editor, volunteer to proofread a PhD thesis in biology.

4. How much time are you happy to provide?

Tracey explains:

In the early stages of your freelance career you will be busy building your new business and need time to develop your marketing strategy, website etc. Any time spent volunteering must fit around the creation of your new freelance business, and other important personal commitments, to ensure a healthy work–life balance is maintained.

Remember too that if you work for a client for free, or even a reduced rate, it will be very difficult to start charging at full rate when asked to take on future projects.

So remember not to overwhelm yourself, and as time passes think carefully about the balance between your unpaid and paid work. As your career matures, however, there’s no reason why you should give up volunteering if it’s still benefiting you and your business. In our second related blog, we’ll look at what you can get out of volunteering when you’re more established.

Written by the CIEP information team. With thanks to the CIEP members who generously shared their experiences.

About the CIEP information team

Abi Saffrey, Liz Jones, Margaret Hunter, Cathy Tingle

Liz Jones, Abi Saffrey and Cathy Tingle are the CIEP’s information commissioning editors. If there’s a topic that you would like to see covered in a blog post, fact sheet, focus paper or guide, drop the team a line at infoteam@ciep.uk.

 

 

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.

Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: welcome by Andrew Neel; raise your paw by Camylla Battani, both on Unsplash.

Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.