The estimated dollar value of volunteer time for 2009 is $20.85 per hour.
The estimate helps acknowledge the millions of individuals who dedicate their time, talents, and energy to making a difference. Charitable organizations can use this estimate to quantify the enormous value volunteers provide.
According to the Corporation for National and Community Service, about 63.4 million Americans, or 26.8 percent of the adult population, gave 8.1 billion hours of volunteer service worth $169 billion in 2009.1 For the latest information, please see www.volunteeringinamerica.gov.
State Values for Volunteer Time
| Dollar Value of a Volunteer Hour, by State: 2008 Please note that 2008 is the latest year for which state-by-state numbers are available. There is a lag of almost one year in the government's release of state level data which explains why the state volunteering values are one year behind the national value. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Learn more about these figures, including how they are calculated and how nonprofit organizations often use them, at the bottom of the page.
Updated figures for each state will be released in the spring of 2010.
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History of the Dollar Value of a Volunteer Hour: 1980 - 2009 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Please note: Values for 1990-2009 were adjusted to reflect a new data series released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
How the numbers are calculated
The value of volunteer time is based on the average hourly earnings of all production and nonsupervisory workers on private nonfarm payrolls (as determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics). Independent Sector takes this figure and increases it by 12 percent to estimate for fringe benefits.
Charitable organizations most frequently use the value of volunteer time for recognition events or communications to show the amount of community support an organization receives from its volunteers.
According to the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), the value of volunteer services can also be used on financial statements –- including statements for internal and external purposes, grant proposals, and annual reports –- only if a volunteer is performing a specialized skill for a nonprofit. The general rule to follow when determining if contributed services meet the FASB criteria for financial forms is to determine whether the organization would have purchased the services if they had not been donated. Accounting specialists may visit FASB’s website for regulations on use of the value of volunteer time on financial forms: http://www.fasb.org/pdf/fas116.pdf.
It is very difficult to put a dollar value on volunteer time. Volunteers provide many intangibles that can not be easily quantified. For example, volunteers demonstrate the amount of support an organization has within a community, provide work for short periods of time, and provide support on a wide range of projects.
The value of volunteer time presented here is the average wage of non-management, non-agricultural workers. This is only a tool and only one way to show the immense value volunteers provide to an organization. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does have hourly wages by occupation that can be used to determine the value of a specialized skill.
It is important to remember that when a doctor, lawyer, craftsman, or anyone with a specialized skill volunteers, the value of his or her work is based on his or her volunteer work, not his or her earning power. In other words, volunteers must be performing their special skill as volunteer work. If a doctor is painting a fence or a lawyer is sorting groceries, he or she is not performing his or her specialized skill for the nonprofit, and their volunteer hour value would not be higher.
1Corporation for National and Community Service. “Research Brief: Volunteering in America Research Highlights” (2010).
