Monetary Value of Volunteer Time

Sarah Jane Rehnborg has more than a decade in the classroom – teaching volunteer management on the graduate level to students from public affairs, business management, social work, communications, fine arts and other areas of specialization. Along the way, Rehnborg found some interesting resources and methods to convey some of the key concepts in volunteer management. Since her students are frequently new to studying volunteer issues, these teaching tools are equally applicable to any audience that needs to be educated about our field.

In Part 1 of this article presented here, Rehnborg explores a teachnique for developing role-play scenarios and the use of current events in the classroom. In Part 2, presented in the next issue of e-Volunteerism, Rehnborg features ways to explore critical thinking skills, the value of guest speakers and the complexity of internship experiences. In both, Rehnborg shares useful resources that will inform your own knowledge of the field, while helping you develop presentations that capture critical volunteer managemnt issues for paid colleagues and volunteers as they learn the ropes of working with the community.

We hear over and over again how volunteers are indispensable to many organizations. While we have previously covered articles on different methods used to estimate a value for volunteer contributions, a new study out of New Zealand looks at how volunteer value is communicated, both internally and externally. In this issue, reviewer Laurie Mook examines how a team of researchers conducted a qualitative study of local and national medium-sized health charities, and provides some thought-provoking insights into the barriers and drivers to communicating volunteer value for these organizations. An interesting aspect of the study, Mook explains, is that the researchers interviewed the executive director, fundraising manager and manager of volunteers from each organization, providing for a more holistic look at how volunteer value is communicated. Mook also provides her insights into the practical implications of the study, encouraging readers to reflect on the implications of making volunteer contributions visible while also considering the impact of keeping them invisible.

In this issue, author Laurie Mook looks at an interesting case study of the Philadelphia Ronald McDonald House as an example of how to measure the direct impact of volunteer service on the organization, clients and volunteers themselves. The research – conducted by Debbie Haski-Leventhal (Australia School of Business), Lesley Hustinx (Ghent University, Belgium), and Femida Handy (University of Pennsylvania) – is based on a series of surveys, informal interviews and observations through the researchers’ own involvement as volunteers in the organization.

As Mook explains, volunteer managers often view the monetary value placed upon volunteer service as one way to gauge the relative importance of volunteer resources as compared to other resources in delivering the services of a nonprofit. And, according to Mook, volunteer hours are also used as a proxy for impact.  But through this case study, Mook explores a few more tools. For example, the findings in this study reveal several areas of impact that can be measured. From the perspective of the client, three categories of impact emerge: tangible impact (providing services), attitudes (satisfaction and perceived altruism) and future behavior (willingness to volunteer). From the perspective of the volunteer, intrinsic and tangible benefits are identified. Overall, the researchers are able to communicate the distinctive and unique impact that the volunteers had for the organization. 

It’s common wisdom in the business world that “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” In this feature article, author Tony Goodrow proposes a method of measurement that gives a whole new yard stick to help demonstrate the successes of volunteer deployment in organizations: Mission Points ROI. This special method to measure return-on-investment – which is what ROI stands for – quantifies the value of your volunteers’ involvement in ways the long-popular but insufficient wage replacement value never could. Goodrow argues that this “ROI model can help you demonstrate to everyone else a much more meaningful assessment of the worth of volunteer contributions and your ability to manage resources.”

Can you put a monetary value on volunteering? What is a volunteer’s time and effort worth? This Research to Practice re-visits theses questions by studying a paper called “The Economic Value of Volunteering in Queensland,” by Dr. Duncan Ironmonger, Department of Economics, The University of Queensland. Undoubtedly the tools are there to do so, and we will review those methods. In times of austerity, even greater attention is being put on volunteering and the notion of placing a monetary value on volunteering will be very attractive to policy makers. Now is a good time to consider how we ‘value’ volunteering, at an organisation and an aggregate level.

This is a landmark article, in that it tackles a critical subject rarely presented in depth:  what it takes to raise money to support volunteers and the infrastructure of a volunteer program.  As the title says, noted trainer and author Betty Stallings covers both the attitudes necessary to fundraising success and a wide variety of ideas for finding or generating adequate funds.  Included are:

• Reasons why it is a challenge to raise money for a volunteer program.
• How to develop a strong case for support – specific “talking points.”
• Moving from begging to marketing.
• Visualizing success.
• Suggested methods of raising resources for your volunteer program, including donations from current volunteers, outreach to corporations and foundations, special events, gifts in honor of volunteers, and other creative approaches.
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  • Read more about Generating Funds for Your Volunteer Program: The Mindset and Methods

A year ago the RGK Center at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) started the Investigator series and has generously shared pre-publication drafts with the readers of e-Volunteerism to get additional input.  The goal of the series is to act as a resource and a promoter of in-depth research on volunteerism. 

This fourth issue of the Investigator describes various approaches to volunteer valuation.  Such approaches may not be groundbreaking information for the seasoned administrator, but having a compilation and an assessment of several valuation methods in one place should be beneficial to anyone who works with volunteers. The current issue of the Investigator aspires to be a central source of such information