Australia's Volunteers Are Worth $566 Billion. So Why Do We Treat Them Like They're Free?

The Number That Should Be on the Front Page

The Centre for Volunteering has just dropped the largest population-representative study of volunteering since the pandemic. They surveyed 6,830 individuals and 3,948 volunteer managers across every state and territory. The headline number: $566 billion.

That is the estimated total economic and social value of volunteering in Australia. Per year.

To put that in context, the entire Australian defence budget for 2023-24 was $52.6 billion. The entire aged care sector is roughly $36 billion. Volunteering is worth more than ten defence budgets. And yet when councils debate whether to fund a volunteer coordinator position, it gets treated like a nice-to-have.

What the Numbers Actually Say

The Snapshot found 14.1 million Australians volunteer — formal and informal combined. They contribute 3.2 billion hours of labour annually. The study calculates a $5 return for every $1 invested in volunteering infrastructure.

Now, I need to be honest about what that $566 billion figure includes. It is not just replacement labour cost — it includes the broader social and economic contribution. The Victorian State of Volunteering report, which uses a similar methodology, put Victoria's total value at $58.1 billion but the labour replacement component alone at $19.4 billion. So the national labour-only figure would be considerably lower than $566 billion.

But even if you strip it back to pure replacement cost and use a conservative national average of $44.50 per hour (the figure from the State of Volunteering calculator based on ABS part-time wages plus 15% on-costs), 3.2 billion hours still comes to $142 billion in labour alone.

One hundred and forty-two billion dollars. Of people working for free.

The Post-COVID Picture Is Not Great

The ANU Centre for Social Research has been tracking volunteering participation since 2019. The trajectory is sobering:

• 2019 (pre-pandemic): 36% participation
• April 2022: 27% — 1.86 million fewer volunteers
• April 2023: 33% — partial recovery
• October 2024: 28% — declined again

That last data point is the worrying one. The rebound stalled and then reversed. We are not getting those volunteers back on the current trajectory.

The Snapshot data tells a similar story. Volunteer managers are struggling to recruit. The volunteers who did return are doing fewer hours. And the demographics of who volunteers are shifting — which creates problems for organisations built around the assumption that a retired professional will always be available to run the canteen on Saturday mornings.

What This Means If You Run a Club

Here is where I want to get specific, because the macro numbers are interesting but the micro implications are what actually matter to a club secretary reading this at 10pm on a Tuesday.

If your club has 25 active volunteers each giving an average of 3 hours per week, your annual volunteer labour value is approximately $173,000. That is not a metaphor. That is what it would cost you to hire people to do the work your volunteers do for free.

Now ask yourself: what percentage of those 3 hours per volunteer per week is spent on administrative tasks? Chasing renewals. Processing payments. Updating spreadsheets. Sending reminders. Preparing meeting papers.

If the answer is even 40%, you are spending $69,000 per year in volunteer labour on tasks that club management software can automate. The software costs maybe $600 per year.

The arithmetic is not subtle.

The Measurement Problem

Here is the thing that bothers me about these reports, and I say this as someone who thinks they are critically important: the number is only as good as the data going in.

Most clubs cannot tell you how many volunteer hours they consumed last quarter. They can tell you who their volunteers are — roughly. They can tell you who showed up to the working bee. But systematic tracking of volunteer hours? Almost nobody does it.

Which means when these national reports estimate total hours, they are relying on self-reported survey data. Volunteers tend to either dramatically overestimate their hours (because the weeks blur together) or dramatically underestimate them (because they do not count the Tuesday evening committee emails as "volunteering").

The clubs that will benefit most from this data are the ones that can actually measure their own contribution. If you are tracking volunteer activity in a system — event attendance, task completion, meeting participation — you have real numbers for grant applications, for annual reports, for board presentations, and for making the case that volunteer infrastructure deserves investment.

Where the $5-for-$1 Return Comes From

The Snapshot claims every dollar invested in volunteering returns $5 in value. That sounds like consultant-speak, but the methodology is defensible. The investment side captures what governments and organisations spend on volunteer coordination, training, recruitment, recognition, and insurance. The return side captures the replacement cost of the labour plus measurable social outcomes (health, wellbeing, social connection).

The implication for governing bodies is clear: if you invest $50,000 in a volunteer coordinator for your federation, you should expect $250,000 in returned value across your affiliated clubs. That is not a cost centre. That is an investment with a 5x return.

Whether boards actually see it that way is, of course, a different question entirely.

The National Strategy Nobody Has Read

Volunteering Australia published a National Strategy for Volunteering 2023-2033 last year. Ten-year blueprint. Action Plan 2024-2027 with 22 specific actions. Three pillars: individual potential, community impact, and conditions for volunteering to thrive.

Raise your hand if you have read it.

Thought so.

The strategy deliberately avoids reducing volunteering to an hours-and-dollars calculation, which I respect philosophically but find frustrating practically. Clubs and associations live in a world of budgets and grant applications. They need the dollar figure. They need to be able to say "our volunteers are worth $173,000 per year" in a funding submission. The strategy's emphasis on social fabric and cultural value is important — but it does not help the treasurer justify a $600 software subscription to the committee.

What Needs to Happen

Three things, and I will say them plainly:

1. Clubs need to measure volunteer hours. Not approximately. Not "we think our volunteers do about 4 hours each." Actually record it. Use whatever system you have — sign-in sheets, a spreadsheet, or ideally a platform where volunteer activity is captured automatically as they work.

2. Governing bodies need to include volunteer value in their reporting. Every federation annual report should have a line item for estimated volunteer labour value across affiliated clubs. When the board sees "$14 million in volunteer labour" alongside "$2 million in operating budget," the conversation about volunteer infrastructure investment changes overnight.

3. Grant applicants need to use the ABS methodology. The replacement cost figure — currently around $44.50/hr nationally — is the accepted standard. Use it. Cite it. Put it in every grant application, every annual report, every funding submission. The number does the advocacy that narratives cannot.

The 14.1 million Australians who volunteer are holding this country together. The least we can do is count their contribution properly and stop pretending it is free.