The word is out on how much volunteers are worth. If you are a nonprofit manager and you don't at least once a year and based on time sheets or some other documentation, reflect the value of your volunteers, I believe you should. So, valuing volunteers is a part of reflecting the real cost of doing business answering the question what would the cost to the nonprofit be one had to replace with paid staff. Also, funders want to know what the level of community support is that exists and valuing volunteers does that as well. Those are the three biggest reasons.
That said, below the latest is on how much volunteers should be valued. I might suggest that this valuation may not be applied to every volunteer. What jobs volunteers do and how this compares with paid folks should be factored-in to assess full value. But, this valuation certainly gives some guidance.
 
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How much is an hour of volunteer time worth?
Independent Sector announces today that the 2014 estimate for the value of a volunteer hour is $23.07—a 52-cent increase from 2013, up 2.3 percent from the previous year.
The value of volunteer time provides one way to measure the impact millions of individuals make with each hour they dedicate to making a difference. The release of this important figure comes during National Volunteer Week, a program of Independent Sector member Points of Light held April 12-18, 2015.
“For more than 40 years, National Volunteer Week has recognized the value of volunteers to nonprofits, to the people they serve, to society, and to life on this planet,” said Independent Sector President and CEO Diana Aviv. “Though we could never truly put a price tag on what volunteers mean to their communities, we are proud to offer this figure to attempt to frame the immense value of the time and effort they give.”
IS also has updated the state-level breakdown for the value of volunteer time in 2013, ranging from a low of $19.31 in Arkansas up to $39.86 per hour in the District of Columbia. New for this year is an interactive map and table showing data for each state, where the value of a volunteer hour is highest and lowest, and how much the figure has risen or fallen since the previous year. Also new is the complete dataset for the value of volunteer time for all 50 states and D.C. from 2001-2014.
See the full map and table of national and state-level volunteer time values
The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data show nonprofits employ approximately 11.4 million workers — about 10.3 percent of the American private sector employment[1]— and account for about 5.4 percent of GDP.[2] According to data from the Corporation for National and Community Service, about 62.6 million Americans, or 25.4 percent of the adult population, contributed 7.7 billion hours of service in 2013.[3] Religious organizations were cited as the type of organization that volunteers worked in the most (33.9%), followed by educational or youth service (26.2%) and social or community service organizations (14.8%).[4]
To access state-by-state values of volunteer time and learn more about the national figure, visitwww.independentsector.org/volunteer_time.
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