CLICK THE SPONSORS' LOGOS FOR THE LATEST SPECIALS !A VOLUNTEERING Home Index Volunteering [Vlt] Vlt in Qld Vlt via Org Vlt Census 2006 Future Vlt Qld References Methodology Acknowledgements Glossary Charts - 4 Figures - 2 Tables - 13 Disclaimer Copyright THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF VOLUNTEERING IN QUEENSLAND Updated report — May 2008
A report commissioned by the Department of Communities
Queensland Government
AUSTRALIA
A VOLUNTEERING a What is volunteering ?
b Why put a dollar value on volunteering?
c Various methods
a What is volunteering ?
Many volunteers may be unaware that their activities are considered to be volunteering.
For instance, a family member who provides care to an elderly person or someone who
is a member of a sports club committee may not consider themselves ‘volunteers’.
Volunteering itself can mean different things to different people.
In reality there is a wide range of interpretations of what constitutes voluntary
work.
In 2001 the United Nations (UN) adopted specific criteria to distinguish volunteering
from other forms of behaviour that may superficially resemble it.
According to the UN, volunteering:
1 is not to be undertaken primarily for financial gain
2 is undertaken of one’s own free will, and
3 brings benefit to a third party as well as to the people who volunteer.
The Queensland Government defines volunteering as an activity for the benefit of the
community and the volunteer and where the volunteer freely chooses their involvement
without expectation of payment.
The characteristics of volunteering include:
1 free will and reciprocal benefits for the volunteer and the community
2 no personal financial gain (except for reimbursement of out-of-pocket expenses
as appropriate), and
3 formal activities undertaken through public, private, non-government and
community organisations, as well as informal community activities undertaken
outside of an organisation.
Indigenous Australians’ sense of reciprocity and attachment to extended family means
that volunteering is viewed not as a separate, unique or complementary activity to
their professional or personal lives, but rather as a way of life and is a non-negotiable
part of Aboriginality.
In its work on measuring and valuing volunteering, the Households Research Unit has
distinguished between “organised” and “unorganised” volunteering.
Organised volunteering is defined as unpaid help in the form of time, service or skills
willingly given by an individual through an organisation or group.
Formal or organised volunteering is indirect as it is mediated through an organisation.
Reimbursement of expenses or small gifts is not regarded as payment of salary.
Work reimbursed by payment in-kind is not regarded as volunteering.
Unorganised volunteering is defined as the informal unpaid help and care that occurs
within the personal networks of family, friends, neighbours and acquaintances.
Informal or unorganised volunteering is direct as it is not mediated through an
organisation.
It includes regular, spontaneous and sporadic help that takes place between friends
and neighbours such as giving advice, looking after other people’s children or
helping an elderly neighbour.
A more detailed discussion of the definitions of organised (formal) and unorganised
(informal) volunteering can be found in Chapter 3 of the report Giving Time:The
economic and social value of volunteering in Victoria (Soupourmas and Ironmonger 2002).
b Why put a dollar value on volunteering ?
Valuing volunteer time is of enduring interest in volunteering research (Foster 1997;
Gaskin 1999).
Converting the currency of volunteering time into monetary terms can bea useful device
for measuring the contribution that volunteers make to society (Knapp 1990).
It is crucial that we as a community acknowledge that volunteer time is a real donation
that is as valuable as money.
This is especially important when time is the only resource many individuals have to offer.
By exploring ways of putting a value on volunteer work we help to make this sort of work
more visible.
The calculation of the economic value of volunteering in Queensland is important
because it can:
1 emphasise to government and policy makers that voluntary work makes a significant
2 contribution to the Queensland community
3 encourage Queensland people to become volunteers by demonstrating the economic
benefits of volunteering, and inform the media and the community about the value of
volunteer time to the Queensland economy.
Although anecdotal evidence suggests that the economic contribution of volunteering is
great, there are limited reliable figures on the exact monetary value.
While we have various official statistics about participation rates, there are no readily
available official statistics to show the important contribution volunteering makes to
the Queensland economy.
c Various methods
Each quarter the national accounts published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)
make visible only part of the valuable economic activities of Australia — the productive
activities that we pay for through the market economy.
Unpaid non-market activities that are about as valuable are omitted from the quarterly
national accounts, thus unpaid household and volunteer work are invisible and consequently
tend to be ignored from our national objectives and from indicators of our national
performance.
To rectify this narrow focus, it is necessary to put a value on the unpaid production
through household and volunteer work.
Satellite National Accounts of household productive activitiesA method developed in the United Kingdom, called the Volunteer Investment and Value Audit
(VIVA), puts a value on the resources used to support volunteers (management staff costs,
training, recruitment, insurance and administration) in relation to the value of
volunteer time.
This approach quantifies the economic investment that organisations make in their volunteers.
As many organisers of volunteers would contend, contrary to popular opinion, volunteers
are not free of cost.
The VIVA ratio, which states that for every dollar invested in volunteers there is a
return of X dollars in the value of the volunteers' work, is calculated by dividing the
value of volunteer time by organisational investments.
This method is very useful in producing audit data for individual organisations.
Gaskin (1999) has found that money spent on volunteers is more than doubled in value
and may increase up to eightfold.
Undoubtedly, the most satisfactory valuation method involves counting the specific outputs
and pricing these outputs at market prices of comparable goods or services produced and
sold in the market.
For example, the meals provided at home can be counted and valued at market prices for
comparable restaurant or take-away meals.
The “value added” by the unpaid household labour is then obtained by deducting the costs
of the purchased intermediate inputs of food, energy and other materials and the cost of
the household capital used in the meal preparation.
This method gives a more accurate reflection of the labour productivity of the technology
of the household.
An alternative method, which is less satisfactory from the point of view of reflecting the
productivity or efficiency of household technology, involves valuing the time spent in an
unpaid activity at a “comparable” market wage.
The wage chosen is either
(1) the “opportunity cost” of the time the persons involved in unpaid work could
have obtained if they had spent the time in paid work;
(2) the “specialist wage” that would be needed to pay a specialist from the market
to do the activity (say, a cook to do cooking or a baby-sitter to do baby-sitting);
or (3) the “generalist wage” that a general housekeeper would be paid to do the unpaid
work.
The “net” opportunity cost values unpaid work at the after tax wage rate less work-related
expenses plus income by way of employer cost of superannuation and fringe benefits.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics used these comparable market wage methods to produce
estimates for 1992 and 1997 of the value of unpaid household work and the value of
volunteer and community work.
In the ABS estimates, volunteer and community work excluded time spent in civic
responsibilities, other community participation and in church and religious activities
but included the time spent in travel for volunteer and community work.
Using this definition, the ABS estimates of the value of volunteer and community work
in Australia in 1992 and 1997 (ABS 1994b and 2000) are as follows.
Table 1: Value of volunteer and community work, Australia
1992 1997
Wage rate $billion/year Wage rate $billion/year
$/hour $/hour
Specialist wage 12.17 18 13.96 25
Opportunity cost -
gross 14.34 21 17.47 31
Opportunity cost -
net 10.87 16 13.47 24
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