Assessing the Impact of

Volunteering: A toolkit for

practitioners
Joanna Stuart, Institute for Volunteering Research

An initiative of in association with

Why assess impacts and why a toolkit?

• Increasing pressure for organisations to monitor, measure

and demonstrate the impact and benefits of volunteering
programmes
• Demand from funders – increasingly want to know
what difference their funding makes
• Demand from organisations – want to know what
works and what could work better
• Demand from volunteers – ‘no one wants to give their
time to something that has no impact’
The Volunteering Impact Assessment toolkit

• Developed by IVR to help organisations

assess the impact of volunteering
• Provides a useful framework for
assessing a broad range of impacts
• Includes a series of adaptable research
tools
• Provides guidelines for data collection
and analysis
• Used by a number of organisations in
the UK and overseas
What do we mean by impacts?

“All the changes resulting from a project,

activity or organisation. Includes intended
and unintended changes, positive and
negative, long and short term changes”

Source: Wainwright, S. Measuring Impact: A guide to resources, NCVO

The toolkit framework: Who benefits?

• A whole range of stakeholders – exactly who will be

different for each organisation, but can be broadly
grouped into:

- Volunteers

- Organisations

- Service users/beneficiaries

- Wider community
The toolkit framework: How do they benefit?

• Endless list of impacts – need to be categorised:

- Economic capital

- Physical capital

- Human capital

- Social capital

- Cultural capital
What are the impacts?
• Increased earning power
Economic capital • Financial costs through being out of pocket
The economic benefits and costs of volunteering

• Training courses
Physical capital • Social events
Tangible benefits for volunteers

• Confidence and self esteem

Human capital • Vocational skills
Personal development and skills gained

• Increased contacts and networks

Social capital • Increased involvement in local activities
Social relationships, networks and trusts developed

• Increased sense of community

Cultural capital • Increased understanding of other cultures
Development of cultural identity and understanding
 The tools

• Core and supplementary questionnaires for each

stakeholder group with questions for the five types of
capital
 The tools

• Core and supplementary questionnaires for each

stakeholder group with questions for the five types of
capital
The tools

• Core and supplementary questionnaires for each

stakeholder group with questions for the five types
of capital
• Focus group topic guides
• Volunteer manager audit form
• Volunteer diary
How have organisations used the results?

• To inform the development of volunteering

programmes
• To help develop volunteering strategies
• To provide evidence of impact to existing funders
• To attract funding
• To raise the profile of the volunteering programme
internally and externally
• To raise the profile of the organisation
• To recruit volunteers
What are the challenges and issues?

• Can be time consuming - need to take a piecemeal

approach and don’t try and do it all at the same time
• Need to integrate impact assessment into
volunteering programmes – not just an adhoc add on
exercise but an ongoing process
• Need to take on board negative findings as well as
the positives
• Findings draw heavily on people’s perceptions
• There are other sector specific tools which might be
useful, particularly for assessing the impacts on
service users and beneficiaries
 Children’s Hospice Association Scotland

• Methods: Volunteers trained to undertake assessment on

staff, volunteers, beneficiaries
• Findings:
- Volunteers: positive experience:
• 84% said they had built friendships and networks through volunteering
• But, 18% felt their skills weren’t being utilised
- Staff: valued the role of volunteers:
• 83% felt volunteers helped create open & diverse culture
• But, 18% felt they were over reliant on volunteers, and some did not
recognise board members as volunteers
 Children’s Hospice Association Scotland
- Families: significant impact of volunteers on families
• 73% said volunteers led to new friendships & social networks
• But, some were concerned about how volunteers were vetted and
whether they should be undertaking care roles
• Using the findings:
- A number of recommendations arose from the research
which are being built into a new strategy:
• Review how volunteer skills are utilised to full effect
• Raise awareness within the organisation of the role and volunteer status
of the board
• Explore the possibility of extending volunteer roles to home care support
• Develop a leaflet for families about volunteers, their role, and how they
are recruited
Further information

Further information about the impact assessment toolkit is

available from:
http://www.ivr.org.uk/booksandlibrary/Impact+Assess
ment+Toolkit.htm

Specific tools are also available for sports volunteering and health
volunteering

Joanna Stuart
Institute for Volunteering Research
Joanna.stuart@volunteeringengland.org