Thanks for the suggestions. This is a nice blog… I’m impressed.

Despite your editing, and the egregious use of an extra ‘t’ in the aforementioned word, the answer is yes!

Volunteering is very much like painting the church or feeding the homeless. In both cases it’s highly likely that you are neither a chef nor a professional painter. You’re offering labor because nobody else will do it.

On the other hand, if that very same church asked you to write their newsletter, you could ‘volunteer’ and scrap out a little flyer, maybe with some clipart and a wee insert of some stolen web-graphic.

But far better for you as a writer to blow the roof off the opportunity by writing to the best of your abilities, arrange for some low-cost printing and maybe helping to set up a website, too. Your extra effort feeds itself by getting you further into the community to meet more clients, finding additional resources, networking opportunities and some on-the-job training to boot.

In the end, the best advice I can give is to give it your all if you’re giving it away. How’s THAT for a crazy sentence?

So the difference between volunteerism and pro bono: the former is just being a good Samaritan (you could paint the Church’s cafeteria for it matters), the latter is a small business owner offering his services for the recognition rather than pay. Am I right here?

Thanks for the comment. If you’d like to translate the article, you can send me a request by clicking here and I’ll send you the submission guidelines!