In total, approximately 61.8 million Americans volunteered in their communities in 2008 giving 8 billion hours of service worth nearly $162 billion to America’s communities. Volunteer hours and 2008 dollar values of volunteer time are listed below by state and the District of Columbia. This webpage and others outline the total number of volunteer hours by state in 2009. 

EDITOR’S COMMENTS: In California, there were 908,526,577 volunteer hours– and at an estimated value of $20.25 per hour, that totals to over $18 billion dollars in value. But the value is probably higher for our state, since the $20.25 per hour estimate comes from earlier estimations, and researchers at Independent Sector currently state that volunteer hours were valued at $20.85 nationally — and because of higher cost of living and other factors, a volunteer hour in California was estimated to be $23.29.

See VOLUNTEERING IN AMERICA website, INDEPENDENT SECTOR website.