Brighton volunteers gave £24m of time last yearVolunteers in the coastal city of Brighton, East Sussex, UK, have donated over 58,000 hours of time worth an estimated £24m in the last year.
The figures were revealed as the City Council announced its intention to extend its grant funding to voluntary and community groups for a further three years. The funding is worth c£1.5m pa to 200 groups and will place the City Council in a leading position as a statutory funder that is committed to supporting the voluntary and community sector when others are slashing their grant aid budgets.
A spokesperson for the City Council said “This demonstrates the council’s commitment to the voluntary sector at a time of enormous financial challenge.
“The innovative and efficient nature of project organisers provides excellent value for money and helps keep the city vibrant at a grassroots level.”
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£24,000,000 divided by 58,000 hours = £413.79 an hour. That's a rather startling valuation of the work those volunteers are doing. It is 68 times the national minimum wage. What were those volunteers doing?
Good point @robjackson74, we got these figures from a press release by the council, not sure how they arrived at that figure, but it sounds good either way!
Volunteer Managers in Brighton are clearly creating innovative and specialist roles that only highly-skilled volunteers can do, or that have a tremendous impact on the community with a clear financial affect, resulting in a sky-high valuation of their hourly work...
or maybe by releasing this, Brighton Council are devaluing the genuine work done by forward-thinking people and bodies to find a value to volunteer effort that goes past £ per hour?
I don't think we should get too caught up on the figures here, yes they seem high and the calculation seems a bit out, but the main gist here is a City Council that clearly values volunteering and is prepared to put some money into funding some of the infrastructure when so many other councils are slashing it needlessly.
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