one tenth

Even in businesses, which are arguably the primary entity in which financial matters make up the main goal, some things go unpaid. Start-ups often offer under-market salaries during their infancy period, balancing their employees’ financial losses with promise of stock options, as well as the feeling of contribution to something new. Maybe, in a company started between a few trusted friends, no salary is offered. Obviously not a great long-term incentive package, this model only works for awhile. But the point is: it can work.

How can jobs that don’t pay, or pay shabbily, fit anywhere in business? To put it simply, because even though we must work for our livelihoods, we don’t only work for our livelihoods. Something we do between anywhere from 12% to over 48% of our time is something that is, for better or worse, a part of us. In our big-brained evolutionary path, complex social systems such as exchange and peer circles matter in our self conception. They help make us happy, fulfilled, and fit in.

The buzzword for this kind of business presence is “sweat equity.” It is defined in opposition to financial equity: in the latter, money is given in exchange for something, while in the former, sweat is exchanged. It can also mean something more tangible, such as shares given with the consequence of partial ownership in the whole affair. This idea is not just reserved for corporations or start ups. The philosophy of sweat equity is used also in public service, in the well-known Christian philanthropic organization Habitat for Humanity.

Habitat, as it’s often called for short, uses volunteer labor and donations to help one family at a time to build their own home. The organization selects families by their financial need, their willingness to repay a no-interest loan, and their commitment to helping Habitat’s team build their home, and others afterward. The family has to sweat for it, but they get a home, with no initial costs. Even when the housing market is good, homes can be priceless. They represent a refuge, a respite, an escape.

Habitat is not a government program. It cooperates with other government programs, and it solicits help, especially with PR and web space, for corporate assistance and partnerships. These other bodies, with financial resources, help the inevitable need for money. It is the sweat of the masses that sees the projects to their fruition.

Why follow this model? Why not ask for a grant from the Melinda and Bill Gates foundation for enough funds to hire professionals to construct homes? Why not require a down payment from the needy family, to help secure paid help? If it’s not obvious enough, it is because sometimes people are motivated by more than money.

In extension, this concept finds meaning in one tenth’s paradigm. Giving time, giving assistance, giving support and expertise can help in ways that money can impersonate, but cannot duplicate. The extra incentive in the workers being paid on faith is like a seat of hot coals. It pushes, it demands creativity and engagement. The community of benevolence, of lots of hands kneading a hearty dough, goes farther because people know they were important enough to merit the time of others. They weren’t handed a check and forgotten. They carried enough worth to warrant some sweat.