WWD2
Volunteering regularly
Community
What we do
Volunteering regularly
NCVO (the National Council for Voluntary Organisations) defines volunteering as “when someone spends unpaid time doing something to benefit others. Volunteering can be formal and organised by organisations or informal within communities. It should always be a free choice made by the person giving up their time”.
Employer supported volunteering (ESV) is where organisations provide opportunities for employees to volunteer in work time, for example by allowing volunteering leave. Employers should not include any volunteering carried out in the employee’s own time outside of work.
Key Value
A monetised social value of £3,400
The economic and wellbeing value of a person volunteering regularly (based on average weekly volunteer hours, and median hourly wage at 2023 levels) over a year.
Where does this headline value come from?
Average UK hourly salary from UK ONS data from 2024 is approximately £20 per hour.
This is calculated from:
AWE (Average Weekly Hours): Whole Economy Level (£): Seasonally Adjusted Total Pay Excluding Arrears
Divided by:
Average weekly hours of work for full-time workers (estimated and rounded down to nearest whole).
Examples:
- The hourly rate in 2021 would be £579 / 35 hours = £16
- The hourly rate in 2022 would be £621 / 35 hours = £17
- The hourly rate in 2023 would be £673 / 35 hours = £19
Wage figures taken from ONS: Earnings and working hours
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours
NCVO report that people who volunteer give 8 hours per month on average.
- 8 hrs x £19 = £152 x 12 months = £1824, (rounded to nearest 100) is approximately £1,800 per year
The wellbeing value of weekly volunteering ranges from £400 to £2,500 per person per year (as per Faith, Hoops and Charity paper). A median estimate of the wellbeing value is £1,400, adjusted for inflation to 2023 prices is £1,643 (rounded to nearest 100) approximately £1,600. Added together this is a total of £3,400 in 2023 prices.
Total headline value of £3,400
Our approach to inflation adjustments is explained on our Methodology page HERE
Measuring the value of volunteering
If you’re just starting out, start with Bronze first. The result of a Bronze measurement is just an estimate, but requires the least effort; whereas Silver and Gold give more accurate results but require more effort.
Each level has an effort to accuracy indicator, choose the one that’s right for you.
Bronze
Effort
Accuracy
Monetised value:
Number of people volunteering for approx 8 hrs a week for a year x headline value.
For regular volunteering that covers a shorter intervention divide the headline value by 12 months and x by the number of months of the intervention.
Here’s an example
5 people on 3 month weekly volunteering programme, with a total of 8 hours volunteered per month:
Economic value: 3 x (£19 x 8) = £456 x 5 = £2,280
Wellbeing value: £1800/4 = £450 x 5 = £2,250
These can be presented separately to show the 2 different types of value, or added together for an overall value estimate of:
£4,530
Where does this value come from?
Average UK hourly salary, calculated as:
AWE: Whole Economy Level (£): Seasonally Adjusted Total Pay Excluding Arrears
Divided by:
Average actual weekly hours of work for full-time workers (seasonally adjusted)
Numbers are taken from ONS: Earnings and working hours: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours
The wellbeing WELLBY value is based on data from the State of Life Faith, Hoops and Charity report, 2020 using British Household Panel Survey data, and Understanding Society Data
WWD2
Volunteering regularly
Community
What we do
Silver
Effort
Accuracy
Monetised value:
Adjust the economic value based on salary bracket of the volunteer or volunteering role.
Adjust the wellbeing value based on amount of volunteering if less than 8 hours per week.
Adjust the economic value based on salary bracket of the volunteer or volunteering role.
To do this you could consider:
- The position of the person(s) volunteering – are they higher-paid senior managers of C-Suite, or are they from lower-paid positions, or are volunteers in lower-paid industries? Use higher or lower averages
Median hourly earnings for all UK employees in 2024 are £20. Low-pay employees are anyone earning two thirds below the median, which is £13. High-pay employees are those earning anything above 1.5 times the median, which is £31.
- Some types of volunteering might be higher value, e.g. professional services such as legal or financial. Just over half (55%) of employer supported volunteers utilise their existing professional or occupational skills in their volunteering. The most commonly-offered skills include management, communications and marketing, and administrative and secretarial skills. Consider using averages that correspond to the level of the work being done during the volunteering, i.e. what you would have had to pay to employ someone to do the same work.
You can also adjust the wellbeing of volunteering for the volunteers. The value of wellbeing depends on the number of instances of volunteering throughout the year, as regular volunteering is believed to improve an individual’s wellbeing and sense of connectedness:
- One-off / once a year: has no additional benefit to wellbeing
- Several times a year : £1000 in original source value. Adjusted for inflation and rounded to nearest 10: £1170
- Regular (monthly or weekly): £1,400 in original source value. Adjusted for inflation and rounded to nearest 10: £1700
Multiply the wellbeing value per person by the number of people volunteering.
Add the economic and wellbeing numbers together to get the total value of volunteering over the year.
Gold
Effort
Accuracy
Monetised value:
Multiply the wellbeing value per person by the number of people volunteering.
Then add the economic and wellbeing numbers together to get the total value of volunteering over the year.
At the gold level, you should consider recording the actual cost of each volunteer, which is their paid hourly salary multiplied by the number of hours volunteered. Actual salary data can be requested on a confidential survey form, or obtained from internal HR/finance systems for the greatest accuracy.
As well as a financial benefit, volunteering is shown to generate a social benefit to the individual participating in volunteering, in terms of improvement to their wellbeing and life satisfaction.
At Gold level you are looking to build on your silver estimations by engaging with the person or people affected.
Therefore, at the Gold level, you should survey users about their actual levels of wellbeing rather than using the ‘volunteering regularly’ WELLBY proxy.
There are many options for surveying people on their wellbeing.
A good starting point for questions to ask directly through primary research with your stakeholders is the Maximise Your Impact Guide. This guide covers 10 overall impact questions. For Gold level practice you would be looking to understand the question ‘what changes do people experience?’ and ‘how much of each change happened’. Questions you might want to include in your survey to uncover the outcomes they experience could include:
- What changed for you (or happened to you) as a result of our activity or programme?
- Were there any other changes?
- Did these changes lead on to anything else?
- Were the changes all positive?
- Were any of them unexpected?
- What did you want to happen?
- How did your situation/ circumstances affect your experience?
A starting point for questions related to wellbeing is to look at the What Works Centre for Wellbeing website: https://whatworkswellbeing.org/about-wellbeing/how-to-measure-wellbeing/ .
As you start to measure wellbeing directly from the people affected, one set of questions it is important to consider is the ONS4 – the national measures for subjective wellbeing in the UK which asks the following 4 questions on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is ‘not at all’ and 10 is ‘completely’:
- Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?
- Overall, to what extent do you feel that the things that you do in your life are worthwhile?
- Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?
- On a scale where 0 is ‘not at all anxious’ and 10 is ‘completely anxious’, how anxious did you feel yesterday overall?
You could also consider other data gathering activities, including direct observation, or focus groups.
Support in developing your Gold survey approach is available through the Measure Up partners, so please do reach out to Impact, State of Life or PRD.
Gold+
Effort
Accuracy
Monetised value:
Adjust monetised value by discounting based on counterfactual, and other discount factors
At the Gold+ level, you are building on your Gold value calculation by assessing the value against the counterfactual, or ‘what would have happened anyway’.
To do this you should identify a control group suitable to assess in line with your intervention, in order to more accurately attribute any changes to your intervention. For example for employee volunteering, you could assess a group of staff who did not participate in the volunteering programme.
You could also consider any other discount or causality elements linked to your activity, such as displacement, contribution, and duration and drop off. For example, for volunteering it is well recognised that there is a fast drop off of the value after the volunteering has ended. This is something that could be assessed directly with the group undertaking the activity.
Support in developing your Gold+ counterfactual, causality and discount approach is available through the Measure Up partners, so please do reach out to Impact, State of Life or PRD.
| Value Type: | Activity / Output |
What's this?
This is the type of value: specific interventions that have a set value due to a mix of outcomes of varying amounts they may create. |
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| UN SDG Categories: |
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What's this?
The UN Sustainable Development Goals are global goals adopted in 2015 for all signed up nations to achieve for us to have a sustainable global future by 2030. There are 17 Goals that address the global challenges we face, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice. The Goals are all interconnected, and in order to leave no one behind, it is important that we achieve them all by 2030. |
| PN06/20 Categories: |
|
What's this?
PPN 06/20 Taking account of social value in the award of central government contracts introduced the Central Government Social Value Model in 2020 which all Central Government contracting authorities must use in their in scope procurements. It consists of 5 themes, 8 policy outcomes, and 24 Model Award Criteria which outline key priority areas to achieve more social value. |
Evidence
Measure Up focuses on empowering you to numerically measure the impact you’re having. We recommend that numeric reports are backed up with stories and other types of evidence to help illustrate, in human terms, the impact that’s being made on individuals.
We recommend seeing consent from one or more participants in your intervention to collect and tell their story. This should include a little background on the participant, a summing up of life before the intervention, the human impact of the intervention, and the longer term (if known) impact on the person’s life outside of, and after, the intervention.
Providing photographs, audio recordings, video interviews or even artefacts from the intervention (for example, writing, paintings, music, etc from creative interventions) can add more colour, and convey the emotional impact of interventions more directly.
In some cases it’s appropriate to anonymise or abbreviate the personal information of case study participants. No story should be published or shared without the recorded consent of the individual(s) it concerns. Individuals continue to own the rights to their stories and if they request you stop sharing the story or making it available online you should do so promptly and without need for justification.
Feedback
Measure Up is an open, collaborative and transparent. If you have any suggestions or feedback on our pragmatic, recommended approach to measuring and valuing social value, including wellbeing, economic, and fiscal impact, and effects on our environment, please get in touch so we can share and discuss this at our next Advisory Group meeting.
More help
We want to empower anyone to perform and improve their impact measurement – without needing a degree in economics.
If you need any more help, or just someone to do the legwork for you we can help signpost you to software, training and consultancy to help you get to grips with the impact you’re having.
