Virginia state MG policy is that labor is not considered volunteer hours unless it is during a teaching exercise. Here is a brief excerpt from the guidelines:

"EDUCATIONAL EFFORTS VS. FREE LABOR
Often, VCE-MGs are asked to be free laborers in horticultural activities because of their
training and knowledge. These types of activities, such as maintaining a public or historic
garden, designing a landscape, or leading garden tours, do not directly educate the community
and are inappropriate activities for VCE-MGs . There are ways, however, to accomplish
these activities through educational efforts to benefit the community."

The guide goes on to explain how to determine which projects can be counted and which can't and gives good advice on how to turn projects into educational events. I've included a link to the entire guide. Hope this is helpful.

Here is a link that might be useful: VCE Master Gardener guide

I like the way that Virginia has clearly spelled this out issue.

IronBelly

Yes, our group was told by the agent that we are educators NOT laborers. We do our own extension gardens and that's pretty much it. Lately we were told that we have a whole lot of competition out there from greenhouses and other organizations and such who also give garden talks, so our mg educational programs aren't as important any more:( We were told what matters to our agent is that we do the hotline diagnostics. That helps him and is the meat and potato portion of our program. I feel as though what we teach is quality education material compared to some of the other talks that I've heard because it is researched based and gets the truth out there in the gardening world. Our mg'rs put so much work into our programs with research and props. Many a time I have to chuckle at community talks when they give "bad" information and out of conscience have to question the speaker about what they are saying. It sure does keeps me on my toes to have "competition" like that and our talks are always affordable compared to theirs.