Value of Volunteer Time
The Current Estimated National Value of Each Volunteer Hour Is:
Volunteers Strengthen Communities and the Economy
Across the United States, millions of volunteers dedicate their time and energy to making a difference. They help neighbors, serve communities, and provide expertise. No matter what kind of volunteer work they do, they contribute in invaluable ways.
Independent Sector, with the Do Good Institute at the University of Maryland, announced on April 21, 2026 that the estimate for the value of a volunteer hour was $36.14 in 2025* — a 3.9% increase from 2024.
Below, you’ll find an interactive map with state-by-state data, the national value of volunteer time over the years, and ways to promote your state’s number.
Share Your State’s Number
Ready-to-post social media content is available for all states.
Download Historical Data
Look at Value of Volunteer Time data going back to 2001.
*Note: Preliminary data used to generate 2025 estimate. For more details, see the FAQ section following the map and line graph.
Frequently Asked Questions
Putting a dollar value on volunteer hours will never do justice to their true worth, but it is just one way for us to show the contributions individuals and organizations have made in our communities. The estimate helps acknowledge the millions of individuals who dedicate their time, talents, and energy to making a difference. Charitable organizations frequently use this estimate to quantify the enormous value volunteers provide.
The value of volunteer time annual updates are released in April during National Volunteer Week. These estimates reflect the previous calendar year because they are based on wage data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and it takes some time for BLS to process and validate the year-end data.
The source data for Independent Sector’s estimates is the same as in previous years: the estimates are based on the annual average hourly earnings (non-seasonally adjusted) for all production and non-supervisory workers on private non-farm payrolls. These annual earnings estimates come from the Current Employment Statistics (CES) database, which is available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
As of April 14, 2026, final data from the main inputs from the CES database are not available from BLS, at either the state or national level. The estimates will be updated on this website after BLS releases the final CES data. Given historical differences between the preliminary and final estimates that CES has published, we do not expect the final estimates to be dramatically different from the ones we have published here.
You can find your state’s value of volunteer time on the map above, the PDF report, or this Excel file.
You can also access sharable graphics with your state’s value of volunteer time in this toolkit.
For more data on the nonprofit sector in your state, explore our state profiles.
We are not aware of the value of volunteer time estimates for other countries. In order to calculate these, the methodology Independent Sector uses would need to be adapted on a country-by-country basis.
The estimated value of volunteer time values represents the cost of paying people to provide services. This is most relevant when discussing the labor force, as a whole, for a given state or for the entire country.
Special cases exist, such as a high-wage earner who does volunteer work that isn’t equivalent in cost (ex. A doctor who volunteers to coach Little League) or someone who performs highly skilled volunteer work, but doesn’t earn a high wage themself (ex. a retiree who volunteers their legal expertise). There are also cases in which the quality of the work performed by volunteers is lower than the quality of work performed by professionals, which may or may not be true for “skilled volunteers.” The state or national estimates are not designed to address these special cases. Instead, it is an estimate of an hour of volunteer service, in general.
Yes, fringe benefits are included in the final estimate. You can find additional information on the methodology here.
Many nonprofits use the national and state value of volunteer time values to demonstrate the return on investment of volunteerism within their organizations. To learn more, check out this blog post about why numbers matter for strategic volunteer engagement.
If you are using the value of volunteer time in exciting and different ways, please email research@independentsector.org and let us know!
How Will You Use the Value of Volunteer Time Data?
