The measurement of volunteer work

January 2009 | IAVE

This report comes to us from Dr. Lester M. Salamon, with the assistance of Adriana Mata-Greenwood, at the Center for Civil Society Studies, Institute for Policy Studies, Johns Hopkins University.

A Working Group on the Measurement of Volunteer Work was authorized by the 18th International Conference of Labor Statisticians to consider the possible measurement of volunteer work through regular labor surveys or other survey methodologies. The Working Group met on Friday, November 28, 2008, and was chaired by Yandiswa Mpetsmeni from Statistics South Africa. In attendance were approximately 100 statistical officials and business and labor representatives as well as staff of the ILO. Also attending were Dr. Lester M. Salamon of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Civil Society Studies and Ms. Mae Chao of United Nations Volunteers.

The Working Group had available to it a draft Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work prepared at the invitation of the ILO Bureau of Statistics by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies in cooperation with a Technical Experts Group convened by ILO. This report summarizes the major issues explored by this Working Group and the central conclusions the Working Group reached.

The importance of measuring volunteer work

The Working Group began its deliberations with a presentation by Ms. Adriana Mata-Greenwood of the ILO on the importance of volunteer work. Ms. Greenwood pointed out that volunteer work is enormous in scale, essential to the welfare of nations, a source of great social contributions, yet largely overlooked in regular economic statistics. Ms. Mae Chou of the United Nations Volunteers, reinforced this message, pointing out that better data on volunteering was crucial for encouraging supportive policies towards it, and praising the International Labour Organization for creating, through the consideration of this Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work at this International Conference of Labor Statisticians, a "milestone in the international recognition of the importance of volunteer work".

Delegates to the Working Group were in overwhelming agreement about the importance of measuring volunteer work. The delegate from Indonesia pointed to the enormous contribution volunteers made to disaster work in that country; Senegal emphasized the role of volunteers in rural education; Portugal indicated that it had already begun to measure volunteer work through organisational surveys; Algeria congratulated ILO for putting volunteer work on the agenda of the Conference; New Zealand complimented ILO and the Johns Hopkins Center for bringing this topic forward, emphasizing that labor statisticians need to measure all aspects of labor, and volunteering is clearly one of them; and similar sentiments were echoed by Croatia, Italy, Israel, Lebanon, South Africa, Vietnam, Slovenia, Mali, Canada.