The Monetary Value of Volunteers in the U.S.
From the outside looking in, one might assume that from a nonprofit’s pool of supporters, donors are the most valuable. After all, they’re the ones handing over the cold hard cash and that’s what keeps things running smoothly, right?
Well, without the help of volunteers, all that money coming in from your donors would need to be used to cover the cost of labor to keep your organization running smoothly, and then you may not even be able to cover those expenses from donations alone!
Considering the steady increase of minimum wage, which is a blessing in the general sense, many organizations (especially nonprofits) cannot afford to take on paid workers. So, as the minimum wage goes up, the value of volunteers goes up as well!
Some Interesting Data…
According to the independent sector, the most recent value of a volunteer within the U.S. is $23.07 per hour! In addition, it’s estimated that volunteers are almost twice as likely to donate money than non-volunteers, making their monetary value even higher!
A comprehensive breakdown of volunteering by state can be found at the Corporation for National and Community Service website.
For the year 2015 alone, over 62 million Americans volunteered for close to 8 billion hours with an estimated monetary value of $184 billion!
Have a Volunteer Acquisition Strategy…
Now that you have an idea of the monetary value of your volunteers, hopefully you realize –if you didn’t already– the importance of having a volunteer acquisition strategy.
You should be just as invested in acquiring quality volunteers as you are with getting more donors.
