The Value of a Volunteer

Today was my first day back in school for a long time. A very long time.

You know in maths or economics class way back when we were in school when we were supposed to be paying attention rather than steering out the window? The teacher was talking about fractions or GDP and on both days I was wondering 'What's the point of this lesson?'.

Today I realised the point.

GDP stands for Gross Domestic Profit and New Zealand's Not For Profit sector contributes $7billion dollars towards it annually. Once volunteer labour is added this represents about 5%of GDP and volunteers themselves make up two thirds of the workforce.

Underestimated? I think so.

While it's often easy to underappreciate the contributions a volunteer can make towards the value of a not-for-profit organisation, it seems I've been underestimating their value in the dollar sense as well. When only 10% of NFP organisations actually have paid staff this is of huge significance to not just our industry, but to Aotearoa, New Zealand.

New Zealand is obviously a very kind hearted nation, as studies have shown that this trend is not repeated world wide. In comparison with the international NGO Sector, New Zealand has proportionally the seventh largest nonprofit sector workforce in the world ahead of the United States and Australia in terms of relative size. And, something else to be proud of is that there is significantly more funding coming from private philanthropy than in other industrialised countries.

Kiwis, eh? You can all pat yourselves on the back for being such a lovely lot. Ka pai.