Perhaps I wasn't clear. It wasn't that the federal agency was disallowing volunteer time as a legitimate in-kind contribution; rather, they did not accept the valuation of that time as determined by Independent Sector. I believe their rationale was that since Independent Sector aggregates all volunteers, professional and non-professional alike, that the valuation was too high for a parent volunteering in a classroom, for example. We did use these volunteer hours toward our matching requirement, but at a lower per-hour valuation. I have used the Independent Sector amount with other grant programs, however. My note was just to caution folks to check it out on the front end to avoid falling short on a required matching share if the valuation would later be determined unallowable.
