(Radio Iowa) — A new survey finds Iowans are very generous with their spare time, with more than four in ten of the state’s adults volunteering during 2018. Dan Cardinali, president and C-E-O of Independent Sector, says Iowa’s 41-point-five percent volunteer rate is among the best in the country, as the national average is about 30-percent. “Last year in Iowa, we saw a million folks volunteering,” Cardinali says, “and that creates an enormous amount of value when you see that each hour of those Iowans is worth about $23.41, which is up in terms of the value of each hour by about 3% from the previous year.”

Iowa’s volunteerism rate is the fourth-best in the nation, behind only Oregon, Montana and top-ranked Utah. The report finds Iowans donated more than 75-million hours of their time with an economic impact of nearly two-billion dollars.  “Volunteers do all sorts of amazing things, from working in food banks to supporting places of worship to volunteering at museums and donating time as board members,” Cardinali says, “or volunteering with kids in community health centers across the state, and really across the country.”

While volunteerism is vital to keeping the economic engine of the state and nation running, Cardinali says certain federal regulations tend to discourage people from donating their time. “If you were to get in your car and go to a work meeting, you would get reimbursed for that mileage and you would get about 54-cents for every mile that you drove if you were working and getting paid a wage,” Cardinali says. “If you did the exact same trip and were volunteering in the exact same place, you’d only get 14-cents back on that.”

A bill pending before Congress would level that disparity, he says. The Volunteer Driver Appreciation Act is sponsored by Congressman Collin Peterson of Minnesota.
https://independentsector.org/value-of-volunteer-time-2018/