The Increasing Value of Volunteer Time

Recent research from Independent Sector shows that the value of volunteer time has consistantly increased over the years; however, the percentage of the population that volunteered and the total number of volunteer hours that Americans gave declined between 1989 and 2000.

Researchers estimated that the dollar value of volunteer time in the United States was $18.04 per hour in 2005. Assuming that the same number of volunteer hours were served in 2005 as in 2000, volunteer time was worth an estimated $280 billion. The value of volunteer time was only an estimated $7.46 per hour in 1980, but its value has increased steadily over the past 25 years and the 2005 estimate marks an increase of $0.49 per hour over the 2004 estimate.

The value of volunteer time is not easily quantifiable because volunteers oftern provide many intangibles, but Indpendent Sector was able to generate their estimates using the average wage of non-management, non-agricultural workers. State by state estimates are also available.

Although the value of volunteer time has increased, the proportion of the adult population that volunteered, the number of volunteers, and the total number of hours volunteered dropped considerably from 1989 to 2000. In 1989, 54.4% of the population, 98.4 million people, formally served 15.7 billion volunteer hours. However, in 2000, only 44% of the population, 83.9 million people, volunteered, serving 15.5 billion volunteer hours.

Update on Thursday, June 29, 2006 at 08:10PM by Justin Perkins

Organizations who are figuring out how to tap into the talent of their membership base or even leverage small amounts of time from their networks to complete menial tasks on a large scale (check out Green Media Toolshed's journalist database project--how do you get 10,000 people to donate 10 minutes of time--the equivalent of $30,000 at the volunteer rate of $18/hr), will be saving a bundle.  Crowdsourcing (see a recent Wired article about this)  is a big opportunity if nonprofits can figure out how to tap it.  Do the math...

Comments

[Lionel David]

Hello, I'm the founder of a new crowdsourcing company which aims to design new innovative electronic products. This can be a revolution on the manufacturing industry. A well experienced team is already working on that project which is getting a lot of sponsor. Look at the blog to get further details : http://cecrowdsourcing.blogspot.com/. Bookmark this address as we have scheduled to launch an official website by the mid of october for joining this promising community.

[Rachel]

Hi - Volunteers certainly do put in a lot of hours, and their impact is enormous! A new resource for communications professionals and nonprofit is now available called Volunteer Job of the Week, a new free newsletter designed to help nonprofits get the communications help that they need. It’s free so why not join?

To subscribe, send a blank e-mail to: VJOTWnews-subscribe (at) topica (dot) com