Introduction

At Time Auction, we are committed to connecting skilled volunteers with nonprofit organizations, empowering them to get more done and accelerate their impact. The values of these volunteer engagement are multi-fold:

• the short-term value of the volunteer work completed
• new relationships and networks developed
• the long-term impact of the volunteer work and new skills developed for the nonprofit

Other than the heartwarming testimonials and amazing project outcomes we’ve seen, we also measure the commercial value of the volunteer’s time and contribution, so we can see the true value of the work that our volunteers have provided to Hong Kong’s philanthropic sector.

Impact Measurement Methodology

We have recruited a team of incredible volunteers, 2 Human Resources Professionals, 1 Researcher and 1 Grant-making Professional, who have conducted extensive research to map the average commercial value of each skill set, with the outline below:

• We first mapped average publicly available salary data from Hong Kong Labour Bureau and other recruitment platforms for both freelance work (e.g. Upwork) and full-time employment (e.g. Glassdoor) for each skill set
• We averaged the values across platforms for individuals with about 5 years of work experience, as most of our volunteers fall within this experience range
• The averaged values provided us with hourly dollar values of each professional category
• For skill sets that we do not have a commercial value assigned due to the lack of public data, we have conservatively referenced a 3-year work experience average hourly rate of university graduates
• We then onboarded 2 HR advisors to review and adjust the data, taking into account the compensation practices in each sector such as bonus schemes, etc.
• Finally, we sent a short survey to Time Auction's skilled volunteers asking them their industry average hourly dollar rates to the best of their knowledge as a sample check of the data.

Conclusion

The project commercial value thus takes into account the average hourly dollar rate of the skilled volunteer, multiplied by the number of project hours dedicated, capturing the true dollar value brought to the NGO sector by our volunteers.

Going forward, we will include an automatic calculation of the values contributed by all our volunteers on the pro bon projects, so we can track the impact that we are bringing to the NGO sector and so that you — as a volunteer, donor, or NGO partner, can know the ripple effect of your impact on Time Auction.

💛 Special thank to our volunteers, Nupur Agrawal, Kate Lai, Victoria Lam, and Serena Lee for your hard work and dedication in contributing to our impact measurement project!