The grants are a great use of this data.

I've also seen parent groups who make a presentation at the last school board meeting of the year where they present an oversized check from the PTO to the district representing the $$ value of hours worked by volunteers.

Let's say you have 200 total volunteers (in one capacity or another) at an average of 5 hours each (leaders at 300 hours, too many at 1 hour). Well, you'd be presenting a mock check to school board for $17,000! Really emphasizes volunteer value.

Tim

THANK YOU! I've been preaching keeping up with those hours for years. I tell them it is for grants, to no avail. Now I have some more info to back it up. This is very helpful.

I heard a great speaker tonight talking about Volunteer Management. Among many interesting areas she discussed was how important it is for a non-profit to track volunteer hours.

We've discussed this before - I know some of you do it. But what I didn't know was that for some grants, volunteer hours can be counted as "in kind donations".

If the grant requires matching funds, you may be able to multiply documented volunteer hours by a dollar factor and count that as part of the funds your side must raise to match the grant award.

The current average value for volunteer time in the United States is $17.19 per hour! (This is the 2003 factor, our speaker said the 2004 number will be published soon.)

This number is derived by the Independent Sector Organization .

For those of you looking into grants, this may be valuable info. For others, at least it's an interesting tidbit.

[ 09-09-2004, 10:33 PM: Message edited by: JHB ]