Statement by Robert Leigh, UNV, at the Research Forum, IAVE 19th World Conference, Delhi, India 2006
During the International Year of Volunteers in 2001, Member States of the United Nations adopted a General Assembly resolution listing, in some detail, the steps that governments could take to promote volunteerism (GA/RES/56/38). One of the recommendations was to take greater cognizance of the economic contribution of voluntary action and to put in place mechanisms for this contribution to be assessed.
In line with its responsibility as focal point within the UN for promoting volunteerism, the United Nations Volunteer (UNV) programme had already been working during 2001 on a Tool Kit for measuring volunteering, in partnership with a set of research institutions. The Tool Kit was conceived primarily to assist volunteer involving organizations come up with figures which would reflect the economic value of volunteer work which they had mobilized. It was also intended to assist in advocacy vis a vis policy makers.
While this work was moving forward, another initiative was well advanced, namely efforts on the part of the Centre for Civil Society Studies of Johns Hopkins University (CCSS/JHU) to make the point to the UN Statistical Division in New York that non profit institutions and volunteering were a massive economic force and that this contribution was missing in the System of National Accounts or SNA.
The SNA provides guidelines on the collection and reporting of economic data in every country for which national statistics agencies are responsible. The task of providing norms and guidance, and ensuring compliance, rests with the UN Statistical Division.
At the heart of the matter is the fact that the categorization of organizations in the SNA takes place according to the main source of funding rather than activity. One consequence of this procedure is that national volunteer centres in countries such as Australia, England, Canada, Hong Kong and the USA are considered to fall within the government sector. Volunteer involving organizations that charge fees or receive funding from companies end up in the private sector. Moreover, volunteer labour is entirely absent from the data captured. With both volunteering and the organizations from the non profit sector that involve volunteers largely invisible in the SNAs, it is almost impossible to gain an understanding of their scale and scope.
The way that the SNA can compensate for missing items is to establish what are known as satellite accounts to cover the particular subject matter. There are few of these and a very solid case needs to be made for the UN to accept a new one. The CCSS/JHU had been working for many years on a Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project in 30 countries. Building on the results obtained, it was able to convince the UN Statistical Division of both the desirability and feasibility of developing a Handbook on Nonprofit Institutions in the SNAs as a basis for a new satellite account that would capture this missing element. The Handbook, which CCSS/JHU were heavily involved in writing, was issued in 2003 and UNV’s attention was drawn to it. This was an opportunity to tackle the question of recognition of the economic worth of volunteering at the macro level and CCSS/JHU was contacted. The upshot was a partnership that, from the perspective of UNV, would help provide solid data on the scale, composition, and role that volunteering plays. The primary purpose was to help draw the attention of policy makers to volunteer contributions and provide information that would facilitate putting in place policies that would enhance the environment within which volunteering could flourish. It should be said that national accounts have enormous credibility and policy makers often rely on them for their picture of other facets of the economy. It is firmly institutionalized and involves thousands of competent professionals throughout world. The existence of explicit procedure for counting volunteer contribution in SNAs is expected to increase considerably the likelihood that such data would be produced regularly and that the results would be used. The way it works is that countries make formal commitment to implement the NPI handbook. Some 26 have done so already of which 15 are developing countries. To date nine countries have produced a NPI satellite account and six include data on volunteering. UNV has committed resources to the partnership with JHU in nine developing countries spread around the globe. It provides the services of a national statistician and is involved at various stages of the work to try and ensure that volunteering does not get omitted. This involves participation in workshops, publications etc as well as lobbying statistical offices themselves. The challenges are considerable: To help address some of the above issues a series of regional briefings were undertaken to introduce the Handbook to statisticians and policy makers in target countries. These were followed up with implementer training workshops in countries that had signed on. While it is too early to be able to assess overall results, one of the countries in the UNV/CCSS partnership, Brazil, will shortly be issuing its first ever satellite account and work is advancing well in Kenya and in the Philippines. Other countries are starting up. The challenges being addressed are partly technical but they also reside in the willingness of governments to add the new element of volunteering to an already heavy work load. Other interest groups do lobby for their own particular concern to be included in the SNAs. Volunteer involving organizations need to be aware of the power of measurement to help ensure a policy framework that contributes to them being able to live up to their own vision and mission. This is a unique opportunity for all civil society organizations seriously concerned with extent to which volunteering is flourishing in their country, and that see opportunity to hold their governments accountable for commitments they made with regards to their support of the UN General Assembly resolution mentioned at the outset. With pressure from such organizations it will be a lot easier to get governments to accept to have volunteering reflected in the SNA, and to maintain the data once it is included.
- measuring volunteering is not easy…..in most countries information is lacking so it has to be collected, often in the absence of survey modules that capture extent of volunteering
- statistical offices are not themselves responsible for producing the data and have to rely on sectoral Ministries
- countries are not required to implement satellite accounts so the mere existence of the Handbook is only a first stage in the process of convincing countries to implement, and to do so continuously.
- statistical offices are faced with very limited human resources and there are normally pressure from all sides to take account of different variables.
