Assigning value to your volunteer labour

Your organisation may not have much money to contribute to a project, but it may have lots of other things it can chip in – staff time, volunteer labour and pro bono support, to name a few.

Many grant makers allow or even encourage you to include the value of volunteer labour. Often, they even have a field for this on a grant application form budget.

Staff time and pro bono support are relatively easy to quantify; volunteer labour less so. The grant maker may itself tell you what dollar figure to apply to volunteer labour, but if it doesn't, you're usually free to supply your own figures.

Arriving at a figure

Based on The Centre for Volunteering's Cost of Volunteering Calculator, volunteers are now worth $52.19 per hour (as at March, 2026). The replacement cost of a volunteer is calculated using the average hourly part-time wage of a person of their age in their state of residence, plus 15% employer on-costs (inclusive of superannuation, payroll tax and administration expenses).

Enter the number of hours all volunteers will work on a set project by age range, or if you're unsure of a volunteers age, enter their hours in the "all ages" field.

These are the figures your organisation should add in for project budgeting and applying for grants.

Accounting for professional labour

If your project calls on the voluntary labour of someone whose professional or trade skills makes them more valuable than $52.19 per hour, you should bump your figures up (it could be as high as $150-$500 an hour, depending on the volunteer's usual rate).

If you don't know what an hour of your volunteer's time is worth (and don't want to ask), search for the latest ABS statistics on average wages for that profession, or check the PayScale website.

Tips for beginners:

• If the grant maker stipulates a per-hour figure for pro bono labour, use that instead of the ones above.
• Whatever figures you use in your grant application, ensure you take note of how you have arrived at them in case you have to justify them within the application form or acquittal. Your explanation could be as simple as a footnote next to the figure, with an explanation as follows: "Figure based on Centre for Volunteering's Cost of Volunteering Calculator for volunteers, published on the Funding Centre." (https://www.fundingcentre.com.au)
• Don't inflate your figures – grant makers can sniff out an exaggeration and may mark you down for it.
• If the grant maker doesn't explicitly say whether or not they allow volunteer labour to be included as part of a budget, contact the grant maker directly. (If they're hard to contact, include your estimation but make sure it's clearly marked as a pro bono contribution.)