Measuring Volunteering for the 2030 Agenda: Toolbox of Principles, Tools and Practices (2020)

08/10/2020

Date of Publication: July 2020

Authors: Christopher Kuonqui, ZeroPoverty Solutions

Published by: UN Volunteers

Every day, in every country in the world, millions of volunteers work with communities, organisations, companies, and on their own to take action on the issues that affect them. But how many people volunteer, and what do they do? How is volunteering linked to improved development outcomes? And how can we maximize the contributions of volunteers?

This “toolbox” draws on guidance from United Nations entities, initiatives by national governments, civil society, and the private sector and new research from leading innovators to showcase principles, tools, and practices in this field. There were four items of interest.

  1. In terms of measuring the scale and scope of volunteer work, incremental progress has been made over the past decade with updated tools. However, consistent implementation in routine statistical surveys is still lacking.
  2. To date, measuring the intrinsic value of volunteering has focused on organisations and their projects. We do not yet know if and how this knowledge can be used more generally to demonstrate volunteer contributions to well-being and development.
  3. Work to understand the contributions volunteers make is still in its early stages. Some emerging approaches are presented in this report but it is argued that more research is required.
  4. Finally, research on volunteering interventions (policies, programmes, and projects) continues to evolve, drawing on wider evaluation practices, from quasi-experimental techniques to case study approaches. Perhaps the biggest gap in this toolbox is measurement of the enabling environment for volunteering. Understanding how laws, policies, bodies, and initiatives shape all types of volunteer work is critical for policy integration and planning.

The authors outline recommendations relating to the above and conclude that efforts to achieve sustainable development goals while leaving no one behind will be strengthened by better measurement tools, models, and approaches.

The full report is available here.