Wealthy non-profit volunteer works for free for 15 months, then gets accused of inaccurately reporting his hours, so he sends a $60,000 invoice to HR: ‘I didn't need the money, so I never billed for my hours’

Author image for Jesse Kessenheimer
Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor
Jun 4, 2025 1:00 PM EDT

I dream of the day that I'm rich enough never to work again. Career-minded folks are constantly trying to improve their job to make more money to buy more things to live life more fully—and so the wheel of employment keeps turning. However, once I no longer need skrilla to keep up my lifestyle, I'll happily take on a passion project, delve into more hobbies, or simply start volunteering, because look at what a retired person can do with that free time! 

This wealthy man was done cashing in on his fruitful career and instead started focusing on a nonprofit organization he really cared about. He gave so much of his time to this nonprofit organization that they were able to break records for the amount of money they brought in, hitting $20M in proceeds for a charity he believed in. For him, that was payment enough, so he consistently shorted his hours and failed to log his accurate billing. However, when HR caught wind of his lackluster hourly reporting, they demanded he update his schedule. Little did they know, he had worked full-time for the last 15 months, undercharging them significantly for his time. Well, you want accurate timesheets? Here they are.

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    VOLUNTEER Vounters
    via Dragon Images

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

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    You think I'm fudging my hours? You're right. Here's my real hours...
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    I started working for a non profit in 2019 after being a volunteer member since 2000. It was supposed to be temporary for 3 months or so, but the non profit dragged their feet hiring a permanent replacement.
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    I'm fairly well off (not filthy rich, but debt free and comfortable) and didn't need the money, so I never billed for my hours after working 15 months full time. It was supposed to be $25/hr (CAD currency) but I was
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    willing to work for free if they just found a replacement in a reasonable time. They were pressuring me for an invoice, so I finally invoice them for 40hrs/week for 15 months and it was about high $60k.
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    They were livid for a variety of reasons I didn't understand. They accused me of lying about my hours because I was a new father and my wife had gone back to work after maternity leave, and there's no way I
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    could've worked that much. When I told them I had my son in daycare instead of staying at home with him, they sarcastically said "now you know what it's like to work an actual job like the rest of us." They were
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    mad that I wasn't volunteering my time anymore like I used to, but I insisted I was and that my billed time was only for the TV bingo fundraiser and not for any other non profit activities. They didn't believe me. I
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    tried to tell them my hours were actually more than I billed for, and my hourly rate is greatly reduced compared to what I normally charge for all the work I was doing (IT, e-
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    commerce, Web design, marketing, HR, operations, bookkeeping, TV production, etc) but they said they didn't care about the rate reduction. They insisted that I charge my
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    normal rates for my actual hours, and then deduct 10 hours a week for volunteering, which is about ten times more hours than any of them volunteer for. Ok, bet.
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    Cheezburger Image 10512646144
    via SDI Productions

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

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    I started charging them $40 to $125 per hour depending on the task. I recorded all my tasks and hours in great detail. I charged for any time I spent doing what was normally volunteer work for the non profit.
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    Then I finally deducted 10 hours a week. I was billing an average of 50 hours a week after the volunteer hours were deducted. I also took the opportunity to start hiring more
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    people under me on their dime so I could work way less than I did in the first 15 months but still get paid the same if not more. They couldn't say anything because
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    it was exactly what they asked for. I was billing $1k/week before malicious compliance, and then about $3k/week after malicious compliance, which I started trimming back down closer to $1k/week after cutting my own hours.
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    These guys kept doubling down and accusing me of incompetence and fraud over the next year and a half that I continued working, but I didn't care anymore. They turned my passion into a crappy job that I didn't
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    need, so I stayed until all my amazing employees were hopefully setup for success and wrote that non profit out of my life for good. I didn't feel any guilt over being paid for my time
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    with them because I had raised more money for them in 30 months ($30 million gross, about $20 million net) than they had raised in the 100 years before then.
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    Many_Collection_8889. I used to work for a company who did consulting for nonprofits, and they said the #1 mistake nonprofits made, far and away, was treating their volunteers like free labor. The
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    people running the NFP would spend their time doing the fulfilling and "fun" stuff, and then use volunteers to do all the menial labor. The volunteers hate it, and the NFP guilt-trips them by saying
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    "this is what needs to be done if you care about X." So the volunteers not only quit, but lose their passion for the cause as well. Plus, the only ones who stay tend to be nasty themselves, causing a downward spiral.
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    The best thing a NFP can do is find those things that make people love the cause and have volunteers do those things, pay for any necessary menial labor, and then have the core members focus on admin and fundraising.
    via Many_Collection_8889
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    ShootFishBarrel ⚫ I've found myself in similar situations before. It's amazing how entitled people can get when you give them more than they are entitled to.
    via ShootFishBarrel

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