Photo by rjs1322.

A D.C.-based charity will temporarily employ the homeless to promote its do-gooding.

Ten homeless people will gather near the Farragut West Metro station from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. tomorrow to hand out information about Voolla, a charity that encourages volunteering in exchange for charitable donations, in the form of a silver coin.

Voolla asks volunteers to offer a skill on its website. A customer then pays the volunteer for that skill, with the money going to charity. The volunteer selects the charity they’d like their fee to be donated to. In a release, Voolla chief volunteer Stephanie Downs said the Web site enables “people to turn everyday expenses into donations.”

While this may bring to mind the time a marketing agency paid the homeless to serve as WiFi hotspots at South by Southwest, it is rather different.

The company consulted with Street Sense, the newspaper that covers homeless issues and employs the homeless to sell the papers, to hire vendors for Tuesday’s event. The ten homeless people will be paid for their time.