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$34.79 and What to Do With It
Independent Sector released its annual estimate of the value of a volunteer hour on April 23, timed as always to National Volunteer Week. The 2024 figure: $34.79 per hour, up 3.9% from $33.49 in 2023.
It is the number that every nonprofit in America should know and most do not use.
The methodology has not changed in years, which is both its strength and its limitation. Take the Bureau of Labor Statistics average hourly earnings for production and non-supervisory workers on private non-farm payrolls. Add 15.7% for fringe benefits (the portion of nonwage compensation that accrues per additional hour worked). That is your number.
It is deliberately conservative. It uses production and non-supervisory workers, not all employees — which pulls the average down. It does not adjust for the actual skills of the volunteer. A retired CPA doing your books for free is valued the same as a teenager stuffing envelopes. The real replacement cost of the CPA's time would be $150 per hour or more.
Independent Sector acknowledges this. They have always positioned the figure as a floor, not a ceiling. For specialist volunteering — pro bono legal, medical, financial — most grants and auditors will accept a higher figure tied to the market rate for that profession.
The State-by-State Map
The national figure hides real variation. Independent Sector publishes state-level estimates based on each state's hourly earnings relative to the national average.
Four areas exceed $40 per hour: DC at $52.06, Massachusetts at $42.00, Washington at $41.70, and California at $40.14.
At the other end: Mississippi, Arkansas, and West Virginia are all below $27. Puerto Rico is $17.32.
This matters more than people realize. A California nonprofit with 100 volunteers each giving 150 hours per year is sitting on $602,100 in volunteer labour at the state rate. The same organisation with the same volunteers in Mississippi would calculate $396,000. Both numbers belong in their grant applications, but the California org has a significantly stronger co-contribution argument.
If you operate in a high-wage state and you are not using the state rate in your fundraising and grant applications, you are understating your contribution.
Why Most Nonprofits Ignore It
I have worked with enough community organisations to know the pattern. Someone on the board reads an article about valuing volunteer time, brings it up at a meeting, everyone nods, and then nothing happens. The number never appears in the annual report. It never shows up in a grant application. It never enters a budget discussion.
Three reasons:
They do not track hours. You cannot value what you cannot count. Most volunteer-dependent organisations know roughly who their volunteers are. They do not know, with any precision, how many hours each person gives. Without that denominator, the multiplication is meaningless.
They think it looks self-serving. There is a weird cultural reluctance among nonprofits to quantify volunteer labour. As if putting a dollar sign on it somehow cheapens the generosity. It does not. It makes the generosity visible. A donor who sees "our volunteers contributed $431,000 in labour last year" understands the scale of the organisation in a way that "we rely on dedicated volunteers" does not communicate.
They do not know how to present it. The IRS does not let you put volunteer time on your 990 as a contribution. GAAP does not let you recognise most volunteer labour on audited financials. So where does the number go? The answer: everywhere except those two places. Annual reports, fundraising materials, grant applications, board presentations, website copy, social media. It is a communication tool, not an accounting entry.
Points of Light's Uncomfortable Finding
Points of Light released a report in April called "From Nice to Necessary." One statistic stopped me: of the $915.7 billion in U.S. foundation and public charity giving over the past decade, just $1.7 billion — 0.19% — went to volunteer engagement.
The top 10 U.S. foundations allocate 0.07% of their grant portfolios to volunteer engagement.
Volunteers make up one-third of the nonprofit workforce. Funders spend less than two-tenths of one percent supporting them.
That is a market failure. Foundations pour money into program delivery while the labour force that delivers those programs receives functionally zero investment in recruitment, retention, training, or technology.
Points of Light's goal is to double the national formal volunteering rate by 2035. That will not happen at 0.19% investment. It will not happen at 1%. It might happen at 5%, but only if that investment goes into reducing the friction that prevents people from volunteering — the admin burden, the scheduling inflexibility, the lack of recognition, and the out-of-pocket costs.
The Practical Playbook
If you run a community organisation, a youth sports league, a faith group, a service club — here is what to do with $34.79.
Step 1: Count your volunteer hours this quarter. Not retroactively estimated. Actually tracked. Sign-in sheets, digital check-ins, whatever works. Get a number you can defend.
Step 2: Do the multiplication. Total hours x $34.79 (or your state rate). Write the result down. Show it to your board.
Step 3: Put it in your next grant application. Most foundations accept volunteer labour as an in-kind contribution. Some require it for matching fund calculations. The number you calculated in step 2 may be the difference between meeting a match requirement and falling short.
Step 4: Put it in your annual report. One line: "Our X volunteers contributed Y hours of service in 2024, valued at $Z (Independent Sector, 2024)." It takes 30 seconds to write and permanently changes how people perceive your organisation's scale.
Step 5: Reduce the admin load. If 40% of your volunteer hours go to administrative tasks, 40% of your volunteer labour value is being spent on work that technology can do faster, cheaper, and more reliably. A $50/month platform that saves 8 volunteer hours per week returns $14,472 per year at $34.79/hr. You cannot afford not to.
The number goes up every year. In 2019 it was $27.20. In 2024 it is $34.79. That is a 28% increase in five years — which means either volunteer time is becoming more valuable, or wages are rising, or both. Either way, every hour of volunteer time your organisation wastes on preventable admin is costing more this year than it did last year.
$34.79 is not just a number. It is a tool. Use it.
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