Pay It Forward: Acts of Solidarity or Surrender?

This week, I have been thinking about Pay It Forward schemes, and about individual and collective responsibility for looking after each other, and future generations.

Here’s how I got there.

Most of my career, I’ve worked in the charity sector, and one of the reasons this has really suited me (and I have stayed so long) is that I do not mind being seriously – sometimes embarrassingly – underpaid for my labour.

(* This is not a cheap dig at my previous employers, or indeed at JustRight Scotland where our brilliant and values-led CEO commissioned an independent review of pay scales and actively encouraged staff to unionise. More just a recognition that charity sector salaries are lower across the board – and the gap is particularly stark in professions that command high salaries in the private sector, like law.)

Also, for reasons that I haven’t fully explored but know to be true, charities tend to undercharge for their work, across the board.

This makes no sense tactically, because who needs money more than charities, who are going to use it for the public good?

How we feel about money

But I think the wider issue might go to internalised attitudes towards money. This includes the possibility that in a capitalist society where value is linked to financial reward, people may think services provided by lower paid professions are actually less valuable.

It also includes our own biases about money, and how we feel when we monetise our labour.

For me, the issues stack up like this:

• I definitely grew up in a “money is bad” home. My dad was a small college professor for many years before he joined the diplomatic service – and even as a diplomat, he saw himself more as a public servant than a working class boy from Roxbury, embracing the rewards of upward social mobility. He was pretty awkward about it, actually, much to my mom’s distress. She was raised middle class and entirely comfortable with money.
• My dad’s professional choices meant I was raised middle class, but – perhaps because of his own discomfort – he took the opportunity to knock me down a peg or two, whenever I returned home from school or college, a little too big for my boots.
• Partly for this reason, I’m aware of my positionality – my social location in relation to things like gender, class, ethnicity, ability and geographic location. When I think about asking people market rate for the work I do – even when I know it’s a fair price, that I’ll do a good job and probably even overdeliver – I feel deep discomfort.
• I’m not consistent or even very principled about this. For some reason, if someone else is taking market value for my work (and paying me less), I seem to cope better. Something I also find disturbing.

If my dad were still around, I would like to speak to him about this. As it is, I’m just left puzzling over these pieces, looking for solutions that will be effective and also feel good. For my own wellbeing, I need answers that sit right with me.

Why now?

As many of you know, I’ve stepped down from JustRight Scotland, the charity I co-founded, earlier this year, and now run a legal practice at Lawmanity. Lawmanity is, for the moment, a private limited company and I am a sole practitioner. That means I don’t work with or for anyone else, and I set my own fees for my work.

The good news (for people who hire Lawmanity) is that overheads are really low at the moment and I do all the work. This is arguably very good value for clients at market rates – and exceptional value, below market rates.

But I also want to do work for people who can’t afford market rates – this is consistent with a guiding principle for me: people who cannot afford to pay for lawyers deserve the very best lawyers.

So, Pay It Forward? ☕

That’s how I got to the idea of a Pay It Forward fund. I already do a lot of free advice through Lawmanity for community organisations and individuals who approach me, but on an ad hoc basis. Sometimes, people ask if they can offer me a donation or compensation for my time, and until now, I have declined.

I have also (for lots of reasons) held back from paid client casework – but now that things are settling and I’m starting to think about Year 2, I wonder whether a Pay It Forward fund would be a great solution for all of these different challenges.

One of my favourite local bookshops, Lighthouse Books in Edinburgh has an unbelievably great pay it forward scheme which allows people to donate money so other people can afford to buy books. 📚

Another example, perhaps more well known, is the concept of a suspended coffee (from Naples: a caffe sospeso) – when customers are invited to pay for two coffees, one to drink now, and another left “suspended” to be served to another person, later in the day, who might ask for one but not have the means to pay. ☕☕

I love these initiatives because they are about people helping people – but more importantly, people helping strangers, who they recognise as having the same needs and desires as themselves.

This is an act of solidarity, and a very humanity-affirming thing to invite people to do.

But what if…🤔

Of course it’s not entirely as simple as that.

I also struggle with the idea that we shouldn’t increase reliance on charity, or “taxing people” to fund what should be public services rather than just lobbying for government to spend more money on equality and access to justice. Setting up private donation schemes feels like defeat, surrender of that principle that government is responsible for all of us.

I’m also really troubled by the idea that poor people give more to charity than rich people, and that wealthy young people are more generous than wealthy older people. I would prefer a system where government gets on with the job of running a progressive system of taxation and distributes our collective resources to all, according to their need.

But, we are a really, really long way from that, at least in Scotland, the UK and the US, right now. And even if we get closer, making those systems work fairly for everyone is a longer way off still. I love looking back over 20th century progressive victories like winning the franchise for women, and desegregation in most western democracies – but the lessons we live with are that racism and misogyny are alive and kicking, still today.

Over to you!

So help me out – should I start a Pay it Forward fund? Are there any great models out there for what this can look like in legal services? Have you got any advice for me?

And, where do you sit on that line between individual and collective responsibility for funding things that other humans need?

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Thanks for joining me again this week at the Long View, and if you made it to the end, for helping me doing the thinking. Sending warmth and gratitude your way, today and for the weekend. 🌻

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First published on LinkedIn on 15 November 2024:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pay-forward-acts-solidarity-surrender-jen-ang-ekxne/