Volunteers measure up to size at the IAVE World Volunteer Conference

Two giants of quantitative research into volunteering spoke to a packed room at the start of the Mega Trends forum at the 21st IAVE World Volunteer Conference in Singapore, on Tuesday, January 25, 2001. 

Mega Volunteering Trends
Dr. Steven Howlett, Senior Lecturer, Roehampton University
Dr. Lester Salamon, Director, Johns Hopkins Centre for Civil Society

Coauthor of the book “Volunteering in Society in the 21st Century”, Steven Howlett, said we need to change the way we measure volunteering; and secondly we need “interpretation, interpretation, interpretation” - in other words we need to think about what the figures mean. 

Due to some technical problems, Steven struggled gallantly to describe some complex graphs without the aid of slides. Talking about methodology, he said we cannot believe what we read. Mark Lyons in 1997 in the first Values Survey looked at 8 surveys and found that apparently comparable data was not comparable, because of age or sample size differences. For example, in the UK researchers consistently got figures of 42-48% volunteering. That figure changed when the question was asked in the context of the crime survey - it actually went up to over 50% - which perhaps shows that volunteers are modest about their work when asked directly. 

Steven said if compare rates across countries, from 0-10% and 60% and over, we get a broad range but the countries appear in roughly the same order. The UK is around 40-50%, which Steven said is about right, but the figures need to be interpreted because the percentage drops to around 30% if the question is asked about volunteering in the last month rather than the last year.  

"More there for support than illumination"

Quoting a favorite saying, Steven said: “statistics are to policy makers as drunks are to lampposts - they are more there for support than illumination.”

Turning to the World Giving Index 2010, Steven asked why some countries were higher and others lower. Going back to the methodological issue, Mark Lyons talked about the non-profit paradigm and the civil society paradigm - the informal side of things. Steven said we need to look at what we are measuring - charity action or grassroots participation.

Without going into details, Steven mentioned the social origins theory, saying that we can look at the historical elements that are bringing volunteering forward. For example, in the UK, the idea of the “big society” was changing things because it is focusing volunteers towards services. 

Within this broad trend of volunteering going up and down, within limits, there is a trend toward informal and episodic volunteering. Steven said the corporate volunteering aspect is also very important, and finally family volunteering is something that we can also look to.

In conclusion, Steven said you need to be very careful, especially when comparing numbers. 

Answering a question from the floor about family volunteering and volunteering for the environment, Steven said the definition of volunteering had to be a benefit to someone outside the family, which did include the environment. Steven said school governors were the largest body of volunteers in the UK, but they did not recognize themselves as volunteers. Steven said it was also important to ask the questions using the right language, for example, the Hindi language does not have a word for volunteering, so researchers used the term “to help” instead.

Birthday present for IAVE

Speaking after Steven, the author of the up-coming “Handbook on Non-Profit Institutions in the System of National Accounts” for the United Nations, Lester Salamon, started by giving IAVE a birthday present on its 40th anniversary - the almost completed ILO document on volunteering statistics that would be the first official mechanism to measure volunteering. Lester said he wanted to talk about three things: (1) the importance of statistics on volunteering, (2) our limited ability to measure volunteering, and (3) the effort to boost the visibility of volunteers through labor-force surveys.

Lester said his first survey on 37 countries found 140 million volunteer, doing 20.8 million jobs. If they were a nation, they would be the 9th largest in the world. The volunteer labor compared to the paid labor of none profits reveals they make up about 45%, which is significant because the non-profit workforce is huge. The working population, especially in advanced countries, the non-profit sector represents 10-15% of the workforce. The country that ranks the highest is the Netherlands at 15%.

The value of cash contributions compared to the value of volunteering is around two-thirds of the total, so the value of contributions of volunteers are twice as big as all the foundations, corporations and individuals. So even taking away all the other contributions that volunteers make - such as social capital - there is a big economic contribution. 

However, the official statistics ignored the value of volunteering. There are surveys, but as Steven pointed out, every one is done differently. Lester said because of the lack of data, the “out of sight, out of mind” problem, and difficulty of assessing volunteering, practitioners have an obligation to get serious about measuring volunteering at the global level. 

Definition of volunteering

On the issue of a definition of volunteering and a survey methodology, Lester said his team set five criteria: (1) to produce empirical data, (2) be broad and embrace different cultures, (3) be useful and operational, (4) to yield data that was comparative, and (5) be efficient and cost effective. Out of these considerations, the team decided the best route would be to go through labor force surveys, which meant they had to convince the ILO. Lester said he had the hard task of going to Geneva, with some colleagues from UNV, and convince the statistician’s office at ILO that volunteering should be top of the agenda at a time when the internet and other technological developments were radically changing the way we work. The ILO agreed to put the item on the agenda at the five-year conference in 2008.

The approach was to use the labor-force survey, because it is critical to every country, has a wide reach, at is carried out at least once a year. Lester’s team produced a survey module and manual, and come up with a broad definition of volunteering. Early on, while writing the definition the team decided not to use the term “volunteering”. The definition is “unpaid non-compulsory work; that is, time individuals give without pay to activities performed either though organizations or directly for others outside their own households.”

This definition has five key components: (1) it is work, (2) it is unpaid (the manual lays out when compensation and gifts become pay), (3) it is non-compulsory, (4) it includes volunteering not just through organizations but directly to individuals - the team broadened the definition compared to other countries to include “informal” or “direct” volunteering; and (5) is a benefit outside the household (rather than family), so work for members inside your household is not volunteering, but outside it is volunteering.

Volunteering statistics

Key variables are who volunteers, how many hours they did, what job they did and what wage it is worth, the institutional setting, and the field or activity in which the volunteering occurs. The outcomes of this research, Lester said, will revolutionize the base of knowledge, improve volunteer management, boost the visibility of volunteering, encourage more volunteering, foster civic engagement and promote better policies. 

When the final document is approved by the ILO, the task ahead is to implement the recommendations, get the word out so countries adopt it. The team has prepared a task list of things to do: disseminate the manual, inform and mobilize civil society, mobilize allies, capture and publicize the results. Lester finished by asking for help to implement the manual in the tenth anniversary of the UN International Year of Volunteers.