Lifestyle > Society > Volunteering and social support > Volunteering > Volunteered your time: Countries Compared

DEFINITION: A tool for valuing volunteering is provided by the new Handbook on Nonprofit Institutions in the System of National Accounts, developed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civic Society Studies in co-operation with the United Nations Statistics Division. The Handbook recommends that countries regularly produce “satellite accounts” of the non-profit sector, providing a comprehensive picture of its size and operation. So far, eight OECD countries have implemented this handbook, with data referring to a year between 1999 and 2004, and four additional countries are committed to do so in the future.

Beyond the comprehensive information available through these handbooks, information on the size of volunteering and social support is available for a larger number of countries through household surveys. The data presented here are drawn from the Gallup World Poll. Data on volunteering are based on the two following questions: “Have you donated money to an organization in the last month?” and “Have you volunteered your time to an organization in the last month?”. Data on social support from the same survey are based on the questions: “If you were in trouble, do you have relatives or friends you can count on to help you whenever you need them?” and “Have you helped a stranger or someone you didn’t know who needed help in the last month?”. Population shares are calculated as a percentage of all respondents excluding those who refused or didn’t’ know how to answer the various questions.