The true value of CAB’s free advice

At risk of their funding being cut, Citizens Advice Bureau NZ’s Auckland offices needed to prove their worth. Not to the thousands of everyday Aucklanders they help every year, but to everyone else, including to those who were proposing the cut - Auckland City Council.

CAB Auckland had the same problem as any free service - they were undervalued. If it’s free, it can’t be that great, right? But CABNZ is staffed by the highest-calibre volunteers, including veteran lawyers and experts across countless fields, whose services would cost thousands.

If they weren’t voluntary.

So we calculated the true value of their time spent advising Aucklanders across the four most-sought advice categories, and put it up for sale on Trade Me (NZ’s online marketplace), in the form of four objects infused with the advice, at the price of a single month’s worth.