Intervals: addressing misleading methods of measuring the economic value of volunteering (original) (raw)
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Assessing the value of volunteer activity
1999
One standard way to convert estimates of time volunteered into estimates of the dollar value of volunteered time is to multiply estimated hours by the average hourly compensation rate for paid labor. Economic theory suggests an alternative valuation strategy that acknowledges the importance of taxes, the provision of volunteer-assisted services at lessthan-market prices, and the value of volunteer experiences captured by volunteers themselves. One conclusion is that the standard estimate overstates the value of volunteering to the recipients of volunteer-assisted services but understates the overall value of volunteering when the gains accruing to volunteers themselves are included. Note: This article is a revision of one presented at the 26th annual conference of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, Indianapolis, Indiana, December 4-6, 1997. I gratefully acknowledge research support from the National Commission on Philanthropy and Civic Renewal. I would like to thank Matthew Hamilton, Paul Schervish, and, especially, John Havens for helping me to understand the Independent Sector data. I alone am responsible for all shortcomings of the views and analysis presented herein.
On the Economics of Volunteering
2000
The past decade has witnessed a surge in private, volunteer activity across the globe, generating an optimistic belief in the potential of "civil society" in "filling" the niches where both the state and markets have failed. While this has stirred a burgeoning academic interest in the third sector, with a proliferation of studies from the perspective of political science, sociology, and social politics, economic interest has been rather lackluster. Economic theories that may enrich our understanding of volunteering behavior have either not received adequate attention or have not been explicitly identified. Furthermore, the significant contribution made by volunteer labor goes unnoticed in economic terms, as national income and labor force statistics are designed to gather information primarily on "remunerated" economic activity.
A different point of view in the debate on international volunteering, 2017
Publishing on the downsides of 'voluntourism' is hot and well promoted. The white man's burden, poverty peekers, and the ongoing of colonialism are well-received narratives by newspapers, specialized, magazines, NGO's, universities, and many government officials. This publishing trend was fired up by powerful campaigns like Children are not Tourist Attractions and Canned Hunting. This report, of which te research preceeded these powerful campaigns, outlines a very different point of view. It's research outlines a very different problem analysis and thus also comes to different conclusions on the policies that could be aimed at improving the lives of people, flora and fauna that have and still can benefit from international volunteering.
Revealed value of volunteering: A volunteer centre network
Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 2020
This article deals with the revealed value of volunteering. The revealed value approach is one way to determine the value of non-market goods or services. Most studies focused on the value of volunteering have built their research on the presumption that there is no way to reveal the value of volunteering, and therefore proxies must be used. This research uses a plausibility probe case study to explore and identify revealed information about the value of volunteering. The research was conducted using data over a seven-year period (2012–18) from ADRA, a large volunteer centre network in the Czech Republic that has 14 volunteer centres coordinating more than 2,500 volunteers in about 50 cities. I used the data about all the public funding of all the centres in this network between 2012 and 2018 in order to calculate the revealed value of volunteering from the perspective of various governmental institutions. I calculated the total value of volunteering, including financial grants, donations, and the value of volunteer hours. Interestingly, all three values were found within or slightly around the interval estimate of the value of volunteering.