Towards communicating the value of volunteers: lessons from the field
Well-managed volunteers are assets that charities insist they cannot do without. Nevertheless, few charities publish the value of their volunteers' efforts in annual reports. Charities' current practices in communicating volunteers' value reflect the regulatory environment, but not their increasing professionalization. Valuing volunteers can assist charities in services planning and to build their reputation in their communities. However, charities' managers must also accept that judgement is required in negotiating the sensitive nature of defining volunteers' value.
Valuing volunteers: Expanding the relevance and reliability debate.
Volunteers’ inputs to public and other not-for-profit organisations are significant. However, while statisticians gather data on volunteering, accountants do so less often due to a debate as to whether the relevance of recognising volunteer input in financial reports outweighs the reliability of that data and the costs of its derivation. This paper presents a survey of voluntary organisations that publish financial reports. It explores whether the promise of funding for volunteer effort has been matched with increasing financial reporting of volunteering. The results show there is little recognition of volunteer labour in financial reports, reflecting the unresolved relevance-reliability debate in the accounting profession.
Mesurer le bénévolat pour en améliorer la connaissance et satisfaire à une recommandation internationale
En decembre 2008, le Bureau international du travail (BIT) a recommande d'adjoindre a l'enquete emploi un bref questionnaire pour mesurer le travail benevole. L'article examine en premier lieu les faiblesses methodologiques des enquetes sur le benevolat en France et dans quelques pays anglo-saxons, pour montrer la necessite d'une standardisation. Puis il propose une approche critique du questionnaire propose par le BIT et quelques suggestions pour son application en France. Enfin, a partir d'une enquete recente (Tchernonog, 2007), la valeur monetaire du benevolat en France est calculee selon quatre variantes, montrant le role crucial du choix du salaire fictif.