What is the Value of a Nonprofit Leader’s Time?

It never ceases to amaze me how often nonprofit leaders give away their expertise and their time – for free.

Here’s just the most recent example I’ve encountered.

A leader of an education nonprofit, let’s call her “Amy,” was approached by a group of funders who wanted to start a similar program in a different city. They had already identified a potential leader of the effort, but this leader, let’s call him “Mark,” was pretty inexperienced in working with school districts and in managing a large scale nonprofit effort.

So the group of funders asked if Amy would be willing to help Mark. This would involve Amy sitting in on some community meetings and providing one-on-one coaching on a regular basis to Mark.

Because Amy’s nonprofit also received funding from some of these funders, she felt obligated to comply. And let me be clear, Amy was offered absolutely no compensation for her time, effort and expertise.

There are several things wrong with this situation.

First, although this group of funders found tremendous value in Amy’s expertise, they did not assign any financial value to that expertise. They sought her out, and indeed already determined that their effort would be hampered without Amy’s guidance. However, they also assumed (perhaps subconsciously) that this nonprofit leader was so passionate about the education space, that she would be more than willing to donate her time.

Second, Amy herself did not assign a financial value to her time. She was complicit in the funders’ assumption that, while her time has huge social change value, it has no financial value. But the two must correlate. Amy’s time is a limited resource. And thus she must calculate the financial value of that resource.

But, third, nonprofit leaders don’t necessarily have the tools to calculate the value of their time.

In the hopes that other nonprofit leaders don’t get caught in Amy’s predicament, here’s a quick three-step process for calculating the financial value of your time as a social change expert, based on the financial value your organization assigns to your time.

1. Determine Your Annual Cost: Take your annual salary and add the monetary value of your annual benefits (healthcare contribution, social security contribution, etc.). Typically benefits are calculated at an additional 25% of your salary. So, if your annual salary is $85,000 you would multiply that by 1.25 to get the total of your salary plus your annual benefits: $85,000 x 1.25 = $106,250.
2. Determine Your Hourly Cost: Then, divide that salary + benefits number by the average number of working hours in a full-time position (so 52 weeks a year at 40 hours per week is 2,080 hours per year). I know you probably work more than 2,080 hours in a year, but this is just a general full-time number of hours. So, in this example, your hourly rate would be $106,250 / 2,080 = $51.08. Or $51 per hour, just to make it easy.
3. Determine Your Hourly Value: If you are feeling bold, you can add a profit margin to this number, just as anyone who is paid to offer their expertise (lawyer, consultant, doctor) does. The idea here is that if someone pays you $51 for an hour of your expertise, you are only breaking even. But if you actually want to make a bit of profit that you can plow back into your organization, you could add in a little margin. So perhaps you round up to $65 per hour.

Now, you have a number you can use.

If Amy had been armed with such a calculation, when the group of funders came to her, she could have estimated the number of hours required (including community meetings, coaching, etc.) and then presented it to the funders. Perhaps the hours totaled 50 over the course of a 12-month period. This would have a financial value then of 50 x $65 per hour = $3,250, which I would argue is still a very conservative valuation.

So that group of funders would need to make a payment to Amy’s nonprofit (above their normal contributions) of $3,250 in order for her to agree to their request.

(And now that you have a way to calculate the hourly value of your time, you can also use it to determine the value of your time spent on other things — for example, fundraising activities like this.)

I can hear nonprofit leaders and funders gasping, “How dare you suggest that a nonprofit leader ‘charge’ a funder for her time.” And others might worry that funders would be offended by the request and end their other contributions to Amy’s nonprofit.

But shouldn’t nonprofit leaders be aware of (and transparent about) the costs embedded in how they are spending (and being asked to spend) their time? Nonprofit leaders and funders could then have a more illuminating conversation. Perhaps Amy’s group of funders won’t want to invest $3,250 in starting up Mark’s new nonprofit. If that is the case, then they probably weren’t very committed to the new effort in the first place. Far better to know that up front rather than after Amy sunk 50 hours into something that has nothing to do with her organization.

It’s time for nonprofit leaders (and their funders) to recognize the financial value of the social change expertise those leaders possess and invest accordingly.

Photo Credit: David Lofink