A national organization is using data to quantify the impacts of volunteerism across the country. It has found volunteer labor is worth about 203 billion dollars per year nationally.
It’s hard to put a value on volunteerism, but one organization is trying. Independent Sector is a national organization that promotes volunteerism and civic engagement. They collect data annually to figure out the financial value of volunteer work.
CEO Daniel J. Cardinali said volunteering has huge economic impacts.
“So a good example would be Girls on the Run International, a wonderful nonprofit organization, it works with 7,000 volunteers through local councils,” he said, “Last year those 7,000 volunteers dedicated almost 200,000 hours of service, producing just about 5 million dollars.”
Cardinali said his group use public data from the Department of Labor to determine the dollar amount of volunteering. He said the value of volunteer work is up, but a lot of that has to do with wage increases.
“The wages across the United States are up, and so we use the public access data, and we calculate the value based on this average,” he said, “Wages are up, and so the value of someone dedicating time to volunteering is comparable.”
Cardinali said Michigan’s volunteer value increased last year by nearly four-percent. However, he said while the financial value is up, the number of volunteers is down.