---
title: Time Charitology
group: Reach
order: 3
summary: Studies the best use of volunteer hours, so people who give time can see which roles help most and organizations can see what each kind of help is worth to them.
status: live
statusNote: A working volunteer planner compares direct service, travel, preparation, skills and staff support, checks weekly capacity and logs actual hours and observations. Optional personal-cost arithmetic never estimates social value. An organization survey and placements are not operating.
conditions: [measurement-gap, missing-feedback-loop]
firstMilestone: Build and review one realistic volunteer plan with an organization. The proposed survey of at least 50 organizations remains a research milestone.
help:
  - If you manage volunteers, open an issue labeled program describing which roles help most and which cost more than they return.
  - Help design the organization survey for Open Problem 19.
  - Describe a volunteer role that changed something lasting, not just one day’s work.
related: [/open-problems/the-money-time-exchange/, /programs/methods-lab/, /programs/local-charitology/, /tools/impact-calculator/]
sources:
  - title: U.S. Volunteerism Rebounding After COVID-19 Pandemic
    publisher: Laura Hanson Schlachter and Tim Marshall, U.S. Census Bureau, reporting joint research with AmeriCorps
    year: 2024
    url: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2024/11/civic-engagement-and-volunteerism.html
  - title: Value of Volunteer Time
    publisher: Independent Sector and the Do Good Institute, University of Maryland
    year: 2026
    url: https://independentsector.org/research/value-of-volunteer-time/
    note: The 2025 figure uses preliminary data and may be revised.
---

## Use the volunteer planner

[Jump to the working workspace](#pw-title).

Enter available hours and skills, then compare possible roles below. The planner counts direct service, travel and preparation in your weekly commitment. It shows staff support separately and flags commitments above your capacity. Skills matching is a literal text prompt for a conversation, not a qualification check.

Mark roles Planned or Active to include them in the weekly plan. Confirm requirements with the organization and log actual hours and observations after volunteering. An optional hourly input illustrates your own opportunity cost; it does not estimate impact or rank organizations. Export the plan and review questions as Markdown, records as CSV or an editable JSON backup. No openings, placements or messages are arranged. The research program below remains proposed.

## What it is

Many people give time as well as money. In the year to September 2023, more than 75 million people in the United States aged 16 and older volunteered through an organization, giving an estimated 4.99 billion hours. Time Charitology would ask how hours like those can do the most good, and help both volunteers and organizations find out.

## How it works

The usual way to value volunteer time gives every hour the same price. Independent Sector puts the value of a U.S. volunteer hour at $36.14 for 2025, based on average hourly earnings plus benefits. That number is useful for budgets, but it can’t say whether an hour spent sorting donations, tutoring a child or rebuilding a nonprofit’s database did the most good.

The program would start where [Open Problem 19, the Money-Time Exchange](/open-problems/the-money-time-exchange/), suggests: ask organizations what an hour of each kind of help is worth to them, including the staff time needed to manage it, and compare that with the volunteer’s wage. From there it would build plain guidance for volunteers: which roles need skills an organization can’t easily buy, when giving an hour’s wages would do more and where time can reach upstream, such as serving on a board or lending professional skills to work on a problem’s sources.

## Why it matters for the system

Volunteer time sits deep inside the [Measurement Gap](/diagnosis/measurement-gap/). Some volunteering is invaluable, and some costs an organization more to manage than it returns, so role-specific evidence is more useful than assuming every hour has the same effect. Volunteers also face their own [Missing Feedback Loop](/diagnosis/missing-feedback-loop/): they know the hours they gave, but little in the system reports back what those hours changed. Time Charitology would measure the value of different roles and send that signal back to the people choosing them.

## Risks and limits

Valuing time only by results can miss what volunteering does for volunteers and their communities, such as friendship, belonging and trust. The care and flourishing frameworks count those goods, and the program would report them rather than price them away.

## What success looks like

Within five years, volunteers can look up how organizations value different roles, and organizations use the guidance to design roles that make the most of the time people offer.