The Voluntary Leave Transfer Program (VLTP): A Complete Guide

The Voluntary Leave Transfer Program is the federal government's built-in answer to a painful problem: a serious diagnosis, a sick child, or a family crisis can outlast every hour of paid leave an employee has — and unpaid leave means lost income at the worst possible moment. Under the VLTP, coworkers can close that gap by transferring their own accrued annual leave, hour for hour, to the colleague who needs it.

This is not an informal favor or an agency perk. The program was created by Congress in the Federal Employees Leave Sharing Act and is codified at 5 U.S.C. §§ 6331–6340, with detailed rules in 5 CFR Part 630, Subpart I. Every federal agency is required to establish and administer voluntary leave transfer procedures — participation by employees is always voluntary, but offering the program is not optional for agencies.

Think of it as crowdfunding where the currency is time instead of money: many colleagues each give a manageable number of hours, and together those hours keep a paycheck arriving during a medical emergency.

An employee qualifies when they are affected by a medical emergency: a medical condition — their own or a family member's — that is likely to require a prolonged absence from work and cause a substantial loss of income because paid leave has run out. The regulation sets one bright-line test: the absence without available paid leave must be, or be expected to be, at least 24 work hours for a full-time employee. Agencies may not pile on additional financial criteria beyond that threshold.

"Family member" is defined broadly — spouses and their parents, children and their spouses, parents, siblings, grandparents and grandchildren, domestic partners and their parents, and anyone whose relationship by blood or affinity is the equivalent of family. The condition itself can be anything that meets the duration and income tests: cancer treatment, a complicated pregnancy, a transplant, a child's illness, a serious injury.

The full application process — the form, medical certification, deadlines, and what happens after approval — is covered in our guide to becoming a leave recipient.

In any leave year you may donate up to half of the annual leave you would accrue that year. For a full-time employee earning 8 hours per pay period, that's up to 104 hours; for a 6-hour earner, 80; for a 4-hour earner, 52. Employees with use-or-lose leave face a slightly different calculation, and agencies must maintain written criteria for waiving the caps in compelling cases.

Two guardrails protect everyone involved: you may never donate to your immediate supervisor, and no one — supervisor or peer — may pressure, reward, or retaliate against anyone over a leave donation. The details, with worked examples, are in VLTP rules and donation limits and our donor guide.

The Voluntary Leave Transfer Program covers civilian employees under title 5's annual and sick leave system — the large majority of Executive branch employees, including civilians in the military departments. A few groups sit outside it: intelligence agencies (CIA, DIA, NSA, FBI and similar) are excluded by regulation, District of Columbia government employees are excluded, and members of the uniformed services are not title 5 "employees" at all. Postal Service employees are covered by USPS's own annual leave sharing program rather than the OPM-regulated VLTP.

By default, donations flow between employees of the same agency. A donor in a different agency can give when they are a family member of the recipient, when the recipient's agency judges internal donations insufficient, or when it decides the transfer furthers the program's purpose.

The VLTP's paperwork works; its visibility doesn't. Approval notices are often a line in an agency newsletter or an intranet list that most potential donors never see. LeaveTransfer.org gives each approved employee a public, shareable campaign page, so colleagues across the federal community can find them. Donors pledge hours with a .gov or .mil email — no account required — and we point every donor to the correct OPM form (630-A within the recipient's agency, 630-B across agencies) to make it official through their own HR office.

A campaign never requires sharing a diagnosis publicly. Medical details stay where they belong — in the confidential application the recipient's agency already reviewed — and the campaign story says only what the employee chooses to share.