Missing the Point - POL Impact Calculator
The Points of Light Foundation created a calculator on their site that estimates the value of skills-based volunteering to a nonprofit organization. As they state on the site, "a volunteer performing a professional task such as accounting is worth more in the market place than that same volunteer doing gardening." True indeed.
While it is great that POL has made the point to differentiate the value of different skills, it does not provide an effective model for providing a good valuation for skills-based volunteering efforts. It simply assumes that the value of an hour of a volunteer's time is the salary quoted by the Department of Labor of Statistics divided by the number of hours worked in a year. A software developer, for example, is valued at $37.78 per hour because the likely average annual salary according to the DLS is around $75,000.
Assuming that you don't include the costs of hiring and benefits or supporting and managing a software developer, this might be a reasonable rate for a full time volunteer. If you start talking about project-based efforts (consulting), the numbers change radically as the economics for the software developer change. They likely jump from $37.78 to closer to $100 an hour. If the services are supported by the infrastructure and IP of a consulting firm (e.g., Deloitte, IBM, etc.) you probably see the value double again to closer to $200 an hour.
The calculator gets even more out of whack when you calculate more senior roles. According to the Points of Light, an executive's time is worth only $67.73 an hour -- about 50% less than I paid a plumber to fix my sink last week when it was flooding the kitchen.
Want to feel undervalued? Check out the calculator online and see what they think your time is worth:
http://www.pointsoflight.org/resources/research/calculator.cfm
