Valuing Volunteering

The campaign

To make the case for volunteering and improve the quality of the provision it is necessary to estimate and calculate its value, economically but also in terms of the impact and contribution that it has in society.

The volunteer effort produces a wide array of impacts – on the volunteers themselves, on their activities’ beneficiaries, on the organisations through which the activity is organised, and on the quality of life more generally in the societies in which the volunteers operate. Unfortunately, however, few of these impacts are being captured in any systematic form. With the exception of a few countries, volunteering is not covered in official statistics and, volunteering organisations lack the knowledge for making the case for the social value of volunteering.

To contribute to creating an enabling and facilitating environment for volunteering, Volonteurope developed a working strand around valuing volunteering to raise the standards of measuring the impact of volunteering in terms of social value.

This working strand recognised that a lot of work has been carried out both in Europe and globally on measuring the economic value of volunteering. Volonteurope proposed to complement this work and focused on developing a range of standards for measuring the impact of volunteering, specifically in terms of the social value to volunteers, beneficiaries, civil society organisations and communities.

Volonteurope working group on measuring the impact of volunteering

This work strand initially focused on creating a European working group, which included Volonteurope members, partners and experts across the EU and beyond.The working group mapped existing practices with the support of members and partners, determining current levels of impact measurement (processes, standards, tools, trends).

The working group was also tasked with sharing best practice and raising the profile of social impact measurement across Europe. Throughout the project the working group met in various locations across Europe as well as working collectively remotely.

The working group hosted a webinar to raise awareness on the importance of measuring the social impact of volunteering, and worked collectively on a policy paper that was presented in Edinburgh in March 2018. You can find out more about this event in the blog below, and you can view and download the the Measuring the Impact of Volunteering position paper here.

Presentations from our final event