Valuing Volunteering

Nearly 1 billion people throughout the world volunteer time to support their community, their neighbours or more generally to give their time freely to contribute to the common good. A study has identified that in the European Union around 92 to 94 million adults are involved in volunteering.

Although volunteering is a central activity of our society, there is still a lack of a common legal framework and coherent legislation across the member states. An environment that facilitates and enables volunteering demands secure and sustainable funding for volunteering infrastructure, as well as a common understanding of the key principles and components of quality volunteering.

Volonteurope and its partners  established a European working group on measuring the impact of volunteering. This working group is tasked with sharing best practice, developing universal indicators and raising the profile of impact measurement across Europe, focusing particularly on social impact.

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 the beneficiaries of their activities, 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 has proposed as one of its working strands to raise the standards of measuring the impact of volunteering in terms of social value.
We recognise that a lot of work has been carried out both in Europe and globally on measuring the economic value of volunteering. Volonteurope propose to complement this work and focus 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

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

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

The working group will host a webinar to raise awareness on the importance of measuring the social impact of volunteering, and work collectively on a policy paper that will be presented at a capacity building conference in Edinburgh in March 2018.