Assigning a Value to Volunteering in Requests for Proposals

Jakub Dostál

doi:10.1177/21582440211009503

Abstract

The economic value of volunteering is an increasingly important part of volunteering management. It has become part of public policies. Some requests for proposals (RFP) enable nonprofits to include the value of volunteer time in compulsory co-financing. These RFP include the European Economic Area (EEA) Grants and Norway Grants. This article addresses the relationship in the value of volunteering, also called in-kind volunteering contributions. The research includes two case studies of finances from EEA and Norway Grants in the Czech Republic: the Czech NGO Programme, responsible for allocating grants between 2009 and 2014, and the Active Citizens Fund, responsible for allocating grants between 2014 and 2021. They share elements through the EEA and Norway Grants rules. However, they use different types of specialist replacement wages. The article summarizes the arguments for including in-kind volunteering contributions. It presents the possible values of these contributions in the selected cases, including the relationship between the type of volunteering and the number of hours necessary to achieve these values. The article defines the theoretical basis for calculating the value of in-kind volunteer contributions and illustrates this with real examples of allocations from EEA and Norway Grants.

Highlights

Every year, governments, foundations, and other institutions open a variety of requests for proposals (RFP)
The Economic Area (EEA) and Norway Grants give program operators relative freedom to choose the method of valuating the volunteering, but at the same time guarantee some fundamental RFP parameters
V ≤ TC*cfr*vr, s.t. cfr = (0,1), vr = (0,1). This relationship can be considered universal for the RFP that require compulsory co-financing of the grantees; have co-financing rates derived from total costs; and have a rate of in-kind volunteering contributions derived from the cofinancing

Summary

Introduction

Governments, foundations, and other institutions open a variety of requests for proposals (RFP). Some RFP offer full coverage of costs, others require compulsory co-financing. Some co-financing strictly requires money; sometimes it is possible to use in-kind contributions, such as volunteering. This question has become even more acute during the COVID-19 crisis, with many public beneficiary organizations endangered and governments, companies, foundations, and even the general public considering additional financial contributions. The price of a commodity or service is usually assigned through the mutual interaction of supply and demand. Assigning a value to nonmarket commodities or services is more complicated, as are the production factors that do not directly enter the standard market, such as volunteering. The argument for including volunteering in in-kind contributions, and in co-financing, is that volunteering is by nature done by free will and without a salary, it is a special case of labor, a production factor

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