10.4Reading practice 6: summary completion and matching features

AWhen governments measure the value of work, they count wages. By that measure, the tens of millions of hours given free to hospitals, schools, sports clubs and food banks every year are worth nothing at all. Several national statistics offices have begun to challenge this, publishing estimates that place the annual value of volunteer labour in a mid-sized European country somewhere between eight and twelve billion euros. The figures vary because the method does: some estimate what it would cost to hire someone to do the same job, while others use the average wage the volunteer could have earned in that time.

BKarin Bosch, an economist at Utrecht, argues that both methods miss the point. In her view, much volunteer work has no paid equivalent, because a paid employee simply would not do it in the same way. A volunteer who sits with a hospital patient for two hours is not a cheap substitute for a nurse; the activity exists because it is unpaid, and the patient knows it. Bosch suggests measuring outcomes, such as reduced readmission rates, rather than trying to price the hours.

COthers take a more practical view. Daniel Achebe, who has advised three national charity bodies, accepts that the valuations are crude but defends them anyway. Without a number, he points out, volunteering does not appear in any budget discussion, and activities that do not appear in budget discussions do not get funded. A rough figure that is politically visible is more useful, he argues, than a precise one that nobody reads.

DWhat both agree on is that volunteering is not free to organise. Recruiting, training, scheduling and insuring volunteers costs real money, and the ratio is surprisingly consistent across studies: roughly one paid coordinator is needed for every forty active volunteers. Organisations that expand their volunteer numbers without expanding coordination tend to see the new recruits disappear within a few months. Retention, not recruitment, is where most schemes fail.

EThere is also a distribution problem. Survey after survey finds that volunteering is most common among people who are already comfortable: those with secure housing, spare time and their own transport. Schemes that succeed in reaching beyond that group usually do so by removing small practical barriers rather than by appealing to generosity. Paying travel costs, offering sessions that last ninety minutes instead of a full day, and providing childcare have all been shown to widen participation more effectively than advertising campaigns.