North Carolinians Gave Time Worth $3.5 Billion in 2006
The value of volunteer time is often overlooked and is difficult to measure, yet it is a critical component of community building and philanthropy. NCGives has pulled information from a variety of sources to show that North Carolinians volunteered more than 206.4 million hours in 2006. By conservative estimate, this time was worth more that $3.5 billion.
The major source for information on volunteering has become the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Population Survey, done monthly with a sample of 60,000 households. The most recently available data are from the September 2006 survey which asked about "unpaid work through or for an organization over the past 12 months."Based on that survey, 1.73 million North Carolinians volunteered during the preceding 12 months. This number represented 25.7 percent of the state's population. This compares to 26.7 percent for the US as a whole (www.nationalservice.gov/pdf/VIA/VIA_fullreport.pdf, p.103).
The survey also indicated that these NC volunteers dedicated more than 206.4 million hours of service. Independent Sector estimates the value of volunteer time at $17.14 per hour in North Carolina in 2006 (www.independentsector.org/programs/research/volunteer_time.html). That makes the total value of volunteer time in North Carolina at $3.537 billion, a huge contribution to community well-being. To put this number in perspective, North Carolina foundations made grants totaling $1.084 billion in the same year.
While the BLS survey has become the most commonly cited measure of volunteer time, it very likely underestimates the amount of time donated for many reasons. First, it counts only time given to a formal organization, not more informal generosity; second, it requires a respondent to recall activity over the past 12 months; and there is little probing in the research protocol to assist memory.
Before 2002 when BLS became the standard, Independent Sector was the primary source for national volunteerism studies. Findings in those earlier years suggested giving at a level of more than twice as much as BLS data. It is perhaps best to view the BLS survey as a modest baseline for understanding the giving of time.
