How much is volunteering worth?
Twice a year Volunteering SA&NT updates the volunteering dollar replacement hourly rate figure for South Australia, which is currently $50.50 per hour, and $51.38 per hour in the Northern Territory.
The replacement cost of a volunteer is calculated using the average ordinary hourly and seasonally adjusted full-time wage of a person and then dividing it by the standard number of weekly working hours*. In the table below, we have included an additional 15% for employer on-costs, which covers superannuation, payroll tax, and administrative expenses, to provide a clearer picture of the total replacement cost for volunteers.
*The basis of this calculation is taken from the biannual Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) average weekly earnings figures for Australia. This methodology follows Associate Professor, Dr Lisel O’Dwyer’s (previously Prof Duncan Ironmonger) approach to calculating a dollar value figure for volunteering and is one of the calculations that forms the overall value of volunteering figure.