Rotarians put their motto of “Service Above Self” into action every day and in every part of the world, generously contributing time and talents to help others. Columbia-Patuxent Rotary members, for instance, carry out community service projects that address local needs and have worked with distant clubs to cosponsor international humanitarian work.
Here are just a few examples: (1) we collect school supplies to stuff and distribute backpacks each year for local students; (2) we welcome veterans arriving on Honor Flights at BWI, recognizing their service to our country; and (3) we prepare and help serve meals for residents at the Grassroots shelter.
How valuable is this type of volunteerism? A special report prepared for Rotary International by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies has estimated the value of Rotary member volunteer hours at $850 million a year.
That Rotary members log a lot of volunteer hours should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the organization. But the Johns Hopkins report provides a powerful look at the impact of all those volunteer hours. The report found that Rotary members had volunteered a total of 5.8 million hours within a four-week survey period.
Extrapolating those results over an entire year, the report gave an estimate of nearly 47 million hours of volunteer effort generated by Rotary members in a typical year. The Center analyzed the economic impact of all those hours and arrived at the $850 million estimate, if communities had to pay for the services that Rotary volunteers provide.
Rotary International, with the help of Johns Hopkins University, is the first global service organization to conduct an empirical analysis of its volunteers’ impact using an internationally sanctioned definition of volunteer work. The authors of the report noted in their conclusion that at each step, their analysis had chosen the most conservative estimates.
Comments