That sounds a little grandiose, doesn't it? But let's look at the statistics. As calculated by the Independent Sector, the national value of the volunteer hour is $29.95.
But let's put that into perspective. In the most recent campaign, I was involved in, to make a substantial impact on the voter, we needed to do a push for 3 contacts per probable voter. This was in a runoff race after the primary, so there were only two candidates, and most likely a very poor voter turnout. As a matter of fact, the 10% turnout from the Primary, was whittled down to 8% for the runoff. That's a pretty normal turnout.
Let that sink in: 8% of the registered voters who were qualified to vote actually voted!
That's a statistic that I'll deal with in another post because it's curable (and no I'm not delusional or overly optimistic) - that's something else I've experienced personally.
Back to volunteer value -- in our local little campaign we needed to make that last-minute push. The campaign regulars (a staff if you want to call it that, but that unpaid staff needed to have volunteers to do that. It was either that or hire workers - usually college kids - to do the work, and unfortunately, the outcome is woefully less than with volunteers.
So here's the FIRST VALUE OF VOLUNTEERS - THEY ACTUALLY COMPLETE THE TASK BETTER AND MORE EFFICIENTLY THAN HIRED STAFF.
Secondly, with the help of 10 volunteers, spending about 5 to 6 hours each at the last minute, that came to about 5.5 x 10 = 55 hours of work. Let's multiply that times that $29.95 rate = $1,647.25 over the period of 3 days.
Let's break that number down a little more.
There were 10 volunteers
Each volunteer spent about 1:45/day volunteering
That was for 3 days
Some were calling
Some were walking
Some were emailing
Those were the famous 3 touches that a voter needs to click on a name or a candidate.
Because we had 10 volunteers giving 1¾ hours of their time for 3 days, we won that election with 57.9% of the vote. That's a mere 2.1% shy of a landslide.
I hope you have some goosebumps by now - because now the value of $1,647.25 seems rather consequential and actually totally underestimated value of what those 10 volunteers gave.
Additionally, that was a value of $1,647.25 or about $550/day. Let's multiply that times the number of days that we used volunteers throughout the whole campaign. We had lit drops (literature drops), callers, and emailers 3 times probably for about 3 to 4 days each time.
Each "volunteer" time is worth about 55 x 3 = 165 hours for the whole campaign period
Volunteer hours of 165 x $29.95 = a whopping $5,000 value to the campaign - and that's just for the runoff.
Multiply that times 3 (Primary, Runoff, and General), and you get a value for the whole campaign is $15,000.
Hopefully, you are getting the picture of the value of a volunteer.
Here's what's even more astounding.
The volunteer is much more than what you can buy with money because often the volunteer can bring unparalleled and valuable information back to the campaign in the form of voter feedback, but also assessment of the voters' preferences. In our election, we had callers during the last three days of the campaign period before the election, and we could tell that we were going to hit close to that desired 60% mark by the stats from the caller's call sheet stats.
So let's do a quick summary cause there's a lot here:
- Volunteers have monetary value beyond what paid volunteers can provide
- Volunteers are more committed and therefore work harder, more efficiently, and better than paid volunteers
- Volunteers can bring back valuable feedback as well as fairly accurate polling data
- Volunteers giving as little as 3 or 4 hours a week, can lend tremendous support to a campaign
So the next time a campaign asks you if you can volunteer, remember that it's certainly not a 24/7 job, nor is it even close to a 6/7 job. It's more like a 1 to 3/7 task but can lend so much value and support to a campaign. Although it may not seem like much at first, a corps of volunteers can almost always overtake any hugely financed campaign. The main reason is that the devotion, commitment, and quality of the job will always be more efficient and valuable than the paid worker.
Even the smallest amount of time donated to a campaign is always worth it.