A Shutdown Won't Stop These Feds From Serving

What will you do if the government shuts down? Wax your car? Take a vacaction? If you're a federal employee and you're furloughed, you can do anything but your day job: that would be a violation of the Antideficiency Act, and could (theoretically, at least) subject you to a fine of $5,000 and up to two years in prison.

So what do you do if you're still motivated to serve? That's what Dan Freeman, a Justice Department litigator, started to think a few weeks ago. Having moved to Washington recently to work in government, "I was questioning what I would do with so much free time and so much frustration," he says.

Eventually, Freeman and his friends Ari Simon and Tessa Khan, who work in the nonprofit world, came up with an answer: They founded The Shutdown Startup, which is aimed at connecting feds in the Washington area with opportunities to work with nonprofits as volunteers in the event government shuts down. The venture is just getting off the ground, seeking to identify feds who might be willing to serve and developing a system for matching these volunteers with service opportunities.

More information is available at shutdownstartup.org or via e-mail at info@shutdownstartup.org.