 Greetings, colleagues, delighted to have you with us again to take up the third of our sessions on this workshop on the implementation of the United Nations third or social economy sector satellite account handbook, and I am Lester Solomon, I am the director of the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University. And as I have pointed out before, we were involved very deeply in the development of this new United Nations handbook, and it is a pleasure for us and for me personally to present it to you through this series of workshops. The workshops are being provided as a service to the field, and we are also prepared to offer technical assistance. We will need to make a modest charge to cover some of our time, but we have found in working with other countries, statistical offices, but it's very helpful to have this kind of technical assistance to make sure that we are all understanding the words in the same way, and are implementing the handbook in an identical way so as to produce comparable data from country to country. This third session takes up the important topic of volunteer work. Volunteer work was one of the big surprises out of our research that was explained to you and described in our first workshop session. We discovered, first of all, that nonprofit organizations are significant employers in countries all around the world. And what's more, and perhaps most important for this session, that a very significant portion of their workforce is made up of volunteers. We count the number of people volunteering and the amount of hours that they spend volunteering and divide that by the average work, full time work of a worker in the different countries. With the conclusion that well over 40% of the total workforce of the nonprofit sector is made up of volunteers. And this makes volunteering a very crucial part of the third sector. And we have been able to convince the statistical authorities that they must do a much better job of measuring and counting of volunteer work. What makes this especially important is that the treatment of volunteer work has really been very limited and awkward. Both in the core SNA, but also in the work of the labor force statistics that is overseen by the international labor organization. As far as the core SNA treatment is concerned, as you can see from this first slide, it's very limited coverage of volunteer work. And partly that's a function of the way in which the SNA has gone about valuing volunteer work. So first of all, you need to recognize that there are two major types of volunteer work. Some of it is organization based that is it is work that is done through and for organizations. Obviously nonprofit are the type of organization that most commonly makes use of volunteers, but they are used in other organizations as well. And also what is referred to as direct volunteer work direct volunteer work is work that is done for people individual to individual without the intermediation of organizations. And it turns out that in the SNA there are very significant differences between these two types of volunteering. And then so far as the direct volunteer work. There's even a difference between two types within the direct volunteer work. So let me explain for a minute how the core SNA has long been treating volunteer work and I think you will understand why there was a need for a very significant change in the treatment of volunteer work. A significant change was embodied in the 2003 UN nonprofit handbook, calling for a satellite account on nonprofit organizations and in that handbook. It was recommended very strongly that volunteer work be calculated. So far as organization based volunteer work in the core SNA. The idea that they came up with was the idea that volunteer work for organization should be valued at the actual cost to the organization. And it sounds very reasonable until you recognize that volunteer work almost by definition is work that is not paid. And therefore, when you say it's valued at the actual cost, you're essentially saying that it's valued at zero. Of course, poof, it disappears. And so organization based volunteering by theoretically is supposed to be valued in SNA, but the value that was put upon it essentially is zero. And that simply would not work to measure it in any significant way. The correct volunteer work is concerned. Here again, the SNA said yes, we should value it. How should we value it. Well, the only thing they could come up with was to value it at the value of any physical structures that volunteer work produces. And so a volunteer workers are building housing for people without the ability to purchase housing. That could be valued you could find out what the value is of that kind of structure in the country in which it's taking place. And you could put the value of that physical structure down as the value of volunteering. The problem with that, however, is that much of volunteer work, particularly direct volunteer work person to person is for services. These volunteers are medical doctors that are providing free service to people in need. They may be lawyers who are fighting for free legal advice. They may be accountants that help people with their taxes. Lots of work that is done by volunteers person to person is actually service work. And the SNA has no place to record this and it has put a value on it that is impossible to discover. Essentially, the SNA has ignored the measurement of volunteer work, though it has not really recognized that it has been doing that. The result of this is that the data on volunteer work has long been virtually non existent around the world. There are some countries that do specialized surveys, but there is nothing that has been systematized in the measurement of volunteer work. In the 2003 SNA called on countries to measure volunteer work in the satellite account for nonprofit institutions. People were at a loss to figure out how to do that. And they therefore came to us. We had written the UN nonprofit institution handbook. They thought we ought to know how to do it since we recommended it. We in turn went and talked to the people at the international labor organization and to our amazement. They were not measuring volunteering at all. They were measuring employment and employment was defined as paid work. They simply did not have a category for volunteer work. And so this enormous body of work that is taking place, both through nonprofits and person to person across the world was simply being overlooked in the basic labor statistics that were generated by our statistical agencies. So we went to work with the ILO. They were kind enough to give us permission to try to develop a methodology and a definition that could be used to bring the measurement of volunteering into labor force statistics and through the labor force statistics into the SNA. And what we came up with, first of all, was a series of goals that we wanted to embody in whatever we came up with in a way of definitions. We wanted to count the number of volunteers, but we also wanted to measure the amount of work that the volunteers were responsible for. And these two are very different. Volunteer individuals are head counts, but volunteering is not a full time job. And therefore, if you don't know how many hours the volunteers are responsible for, it's very difficult to really get a clear sense of the value and scale of volunteering. So we wanted to go after not just the number of people who did any kind of volunteering, but also the number of hours. And one of the curiosities of this field is that many of the surveys that had been done in countries never went to the hours, but simply stopped at the number of volunteers. And so you had no idea of how much work was actually being done. And then we wanted to go beyond those measurements of amounts of quantities. We needed to put a value on the volunteer work. And we were convinced that the value that was placed on it in the core SNA was simply inadequate. It ignored all of the volunteering done through organizations and it only captured the volunteering done for the production of physical structures in the person to person volunteering. And so most of volunteering was ignored. And we therefore push for what is called a replacement cost approach. A replacement cost essentially says, let's find out what the volunteers are doing. Let's find out how much time they're devoting to those tasks. Let's see what the value put on those activities is in the countries in which the volunteering is carried out. And let's multiply the number of hours times the value the wage average wage for those jobs. And we would come out with an estimate of the value of the volunteer work. And then one final thing that we were after as a goal was to calculate the full time equivalent volunteer workers FTE stands for full time equivalent. What we were after here was to know if we were to convert the hours produced by volunteers in their work jobs. We were to take that that amount of time and divide it by the average time of a full time job in their country. We could come out with a number that represented what the volunteers would represent if they were workers. What size workforce does the volunteer component represent both in the economy of the country and in the economy of the nonprofit sector and what is now the third or social economy sector. So this is what we were after numbers of volunteers, numbers of volunteer hours, value at replacement cost, and the full time equivalent volunteer workers in an economy and in a sector. That's the easy part. The question was, what in the world is a volunteer, because it turned out there were many different kinds of definitions of volunteering all over the place. Corporate volunteers, for example, were volunteers that were working because they were trying to work off a a jail sentence or they were in a military but they didn't want to be in the military. And so they were asked to do alternative service. Are these all volunteers? How do we go about the measurement, the identification, the definition of volunteering? It took us about a year and a half working with a technical experts group to come up with a definition. And we had to come up with a definition that did not use the word volunteer for two reasons. One, because if you're defining something by use of that word, you are essentially running around in a circle. Because if people don't know what the meaning of the term is, telling them that you're measuring volunteering doesn't help very much. In many parts of the world, the term volunteering has a unpleasant kind of connotation. There are many parts of the world in which volunteering was required by governments. This was the case in the Soviet Union where workers were expected to quote, volunteer an extra day of work just for the glory of the cause. And that kind of mandatory volunteering created a very unhappy impression about what volunteering is in those countries. And so we had to come up with a definition that would not use the word volunteering but would convey the essence of the concept. The definition that we have come up with is on the screen here. We defined it first of all as a form of work. This is a significant in and of itself it differentiates volunteering from leisure activity. So a person who plays the piano in their house for their own enjoyment is doing something for their leisure activity. A person goes to a nursing home for elderly people and plays the piano for that group of people. This is a function that could be replaced by a paid worker. What you do in your home could not be you could not pay somebody to practice the piano for you or to enjoy the piano that you're playing. And so this is the differentiation between a leisure activity and an activity that is work. Work is something that could be performed by somebody who is paid by it by a paid worker. The fact that the volunteer is not paid does not make it not work. It is simply a form of work that is voluntary. So it's work performed by persons of working age. And this was to stipulate that it was going to be not simply children who are required to work for their family. Who during a short reference period and this is a term of art in the labor force measurement arena, where episodic activity is not considered work has to be at least for a reference period, which is typically in the labor force arena at an hour of time in a particular week, perform any unpaid non compulsory activity to produce goods or provide services for other people outside of their family. Now each one of those terms turns out to be a little bit complicated. And so we have to unpack unpack them a while. So first of all, you know, what is a short reference period? Work performed by persons of working age who during a short reference period performed any unpaid non compulsory activity to produce goods or provide services for others outside their family. So we have to unpack them a while. So first of all, you know, what is a short reference period. Well, in the labor force arena as I indicated, it's known that if a activity is simply casual. In the field of volunteering, you help somebody to cross the street and it takes you three minutes. This is not a volunteer activity. If you do it 30 times a day, maybe if you stand on the same corner and do it as a regular activity for more than an hour. Yeah, maybe that's volunteering, but it has to be non trivial. It is significant and meaningful degree of time spent on the activity. Secondly, it has to be unpaid. And like the other features, this also has complications. Unpaid means it's the absence of remuneration and cash or in kind so it can be either in cash or in kind. It could be in some kind of product or some kind of service that you receive for your time volunteering. If that is the case, if you do receive that, that would disqualify this it would not be in scope of volunteering, according to our satellite account. So it's absent of remuneration and cash or in kind for work done, or ours work, but then issues arise. What about if you have expenses let's say to get to the place where you are volunteering. Can those expenses be compensated without disqualifying it as volunteering. What about limited stipends. For example, many people go into volunteer experiences abroad. They have some of their expenses covered because they are not in their home countries and they have expenses. Does that disqualify it from volunteering. What about symbolic rewards what if you get a reward in the form of some kind of plaque, or some kind of other gift that is a kind of token payment token indication that you've done something for somebody else. Does that qualify disqualify you as a volunteer. So with these issues, we had to address what was permissible. Essentially, we acknowledge that expenses are okay. Even limited stipends are okay certainly symbolic rewards, but there had to be limits. So for example, reimbursements that exceeded a low wage in a country. So let's qualify it as volunteering let's say you were living working in a country not your own, and you get wages there that are above the market wages above a third of the market wages. Does that mean that you are actually being paid in terms of the wage scale of that country. Well we set a limit as a indication of the kind of point at which you cease to be a volunteer and begin to be. And begin to be a worker at least in the terms of that country. So we say that reimbursement is okay but only if it's below one third of market wages. If it's incurred for expenses that are necessary to bring you to the place to do the volunteering stipends are okay but only in cases of extended travel and symbolic rewards. So as long as they truly are symbolic and are not of a value that would seem to suggest that they violate this non pay criterion. So this is the kind of thinking and you will see when you go through the chapter in our UN handbook the TSE sector satellite account handbook that these terms are all explained in much more detail. And then I am giving you here. So, what about the non compulsory feature of volunteering which is another. Another feature that's part of the definition what does that really mean. Well, again, compulsion can take many different forms. And we differentiate in the handbook between compulsion that takes a legal form a civil or legal form or an administrative requirement, and those that take the form of fulfilling social responsibilities. So, for example, if you are the member of religious tradition, and that religious tradition obliges you to perform good deeds without being paid. Does that disqualify you as a volunteer. And we basically came to a conclusion this was a technical experts group that worked on all of these issues. We debated them we explored different cultures and different religious traditions, and we came up with what we thought were reasonable conclusions that would allow us to make these distinctions and define them in ways that you as statisticians that could actually could actually operate. So what we essentially did was draw a line between civil or legal or administrative requirements, and those that are fundamentally social responsibilities of a communal nature or cultural nature, or religious nature. And if you are in a society that puts a heavy emphasis on a community expectation that you're going to do certain kinds of health, and you do those help and it's not for pay. We do not suggest that that should be disqualified that there are multiple kinds of communal or social responsibilities that people experience, and that these do not disqualify an activity put it outside the scope. Of what is conceivable blibble and permissible to include in our satellite account. The next tough issue that we had to wrestle with was what does it mean to do this work for persons outside your family. Again, work done for people in the family certainly within your nuclear family if you if you clean the dishes or if you cook the meals and not not paid by it for it. There is a kind of work that that represents but it's not truly volunteer work. How far does family extend, and different cultures have different notions of what a related family is. And in the handbook, we basically initially said that it was work done for persons outside the household, the household in labor force statisticians means people living together in the same physical structure. In the household, but cultures different and how many family members, how broadly it extends living together in the same household in some places that grandparents live together with their grandchildren and their siblings. And in other cultures they are really nuclear families. And so we retreated to a concept called immediate family or next of kin, which we define tentatively as grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren and siblings. But we also in the handbook, basically made clear that different countries can come up with different concepts of what family is and measuring volunteer work. And what we asked is that if countries change the definition from this one here immediate family or next to kin. Just let everybody else know that they are not using the core definition, and so that we can adjust the findings to take account of that. So all of this creates a very difficult standard that have to be applied. And to help you all work through this, we have created a mother decision tree. That is the decision tree for determining when you have volunteer work that is in scope of the TSE sector. It is essentially a way to just systematically work your way through all these different criteria that we had to put together in order to get a coherent definition and understanding of what is in scope for volunteering and what is not. The first step in this is, you know, did the activity last less than an hour. And so if a survey has yielded information about volunteering and it included work that was less than an hour. We could not include it. The next step in the decision tree was the person performing it entitled to any compensation. However, they're out of scope. If they're not, they potentially are in scope. The next step is was the activity compulsory. And again, out of scope if it's yes if it's compulsory in scope, potentially if it is not compulsory. The activity benefit primarily the person performing it or his or her family. Again, if the answer is yes, it's not volunteering. If the answer is no, could be volunteering. The next question was the activity required as a part of education or training. Because it's out of scope because we had stipulated that it cannot be a requirement of even a job or a completion of education, only if it is purely voluntary. Was it in scope was the activity performed during paid working time associated with employment. Let me read that again was the activity performed during paid working time associated with employment. If it was, it's not volunteering, because, because if it's work. If it's done during your paid working time you're being paid for it. It's just that the company is paying you to do the volunteer work, but you're still being paid. And so this is really volunteer work or volunteer contributions from the company who's paying you. It is not truly volunteer work. The next question was the activity performed for government or for profit business. The purposes of this satellite account for third or social economy sector organizations. Volunteer activity performed for government or for profit businesses is not in scope. The only activity that is organization based that is in scope is that that is included and done for organizations that themselves are in scope. So volunteering for nonprofit institutions and other in scope. Third sector organizations isn't are included, but not ones that are for other kinds of organizations. So this is the set of steps that you have to go through. And this yields a number of observations about what is in scope volunteer work. First of all, in scope volunteer work. If it's organization based must be for in scope nonprofit institutions or in scope cooperatives and for in scope social enterprises, and all of those types of organizations were the organization types that were taken from our last workshop, in which we identified the in scope, in scope institutional components of this third sector for the satellite account for the TSE sector satellite account. So far as the direct volunteer work is concerned, both that that leads to the production of physical structures, and also that that yields the production of services are considered in scope of volunteering. So both organization based and direct are included, and organization based only those that are work that is done for the in scope institutions. And in the case of the direct volunteering, both those that produce physical structures and those that produce services are included so this is expanding very significantly the range of volunteer activities that is included. Within the in scope component that is included in this third sector satellite account. Not included out of scope of volunteer work for the purposes of this TSE sector satellite account, our organization based volunteering that is done for governments. For out of scope institutional units, or that's required by law, or for training, unless it's for an occupation that itself is voluntary that is if you are doing work that is for an occupation that there is an element of choice in the fact that you have to do some kind of volunteer does not disqualify it. And again here as well. The handbook will provide detailed explanation of what this means in operational terms. So the key in terms of the direct volunteering out of scope volunteering work would include work done for without pay for your own household use, and for related family members where the definition of what is a related a family member is what we described before. So what does this mean in terms of the kinds of examples of in scope volunteer work. It includes all of these items on this slide unpaid work for nonprofits unpaid work for unions and professional association, which themselves are in scope of the third sector third or social economy sector. Unpaid paid work for religious congregations assuming that the religion is not a state religion, and therefore a part of the government. So, assuming that the religious congregations are themselves nonprofits, then unpaid work done for them would be in scope, helping neighbors or strangers obviously would be included taking care of animals would be included neighborhood cleanup communities pro bono professional work that is if you're an attorney and you provide pro bono unpaid work to help people with their taxes or with their property issues. That would still be volunteer work and counseling for neighbors or or friends. So these are all examples of in scope volunteer work. In terms of out of scope volunteer work. Any unpaid work for government agencies, it's out of scope because government agencies are not part of the TSE sector, and therefore, would not qualify for measurement in this particular satellite account. This would be required to complete general education. Again, this would be a stipulation that is embodied in some kind of law that basically says you cannot get your diploma until you complete some type of volunteer activity. In our terminology, this would not be in scope volunteering because it is obliged to be taken undertaken as a product of a rule that is imposed by the education system. There are activities giving directions or a ride. Obviously activity intended to harm people or harm communities or animals there is a sense in which the volunteer work needs to be for the public good. That was one of the philosophical notions that we established early on. That this was public purpose and was not public harm. So what if you were a parishioner in social or cultural or religious events. I said before that volunteering done, for example, for a religious service or religious organization is in scope. But what if you just attend a religious service what if you were a parishioner in a church, is that volunteer work. Well, no. But attending a musical event put on by a nonprofit symphony. Well, attending that event does not qualify as volunteer work, but serving as an usher, for example, would because you are doing more than simply attending and participating volunteer work by persons under the age of 15. 15 years was chosen because that is the rule of thumb in the labor force arena. And as you'll hear later in our workshops. We want to use the labor force surveys as the vehicle for getting data on volunteer work. And so we adopted this as a benchmark. The basic notion is that if you are under 15 years of age you may not really be in control of your life you may be under the tutelage of your parents, and therefore the volunteer work may not be truly fully non compulsory. And that's why we have an age cut off. Obviously, some countries may have a different cut off. And again, the way to handle that is to make clear in the data that you were generating that you may have used a different age cut off paid corporate volunteering. And also not truly volunteering, because, again, that kind of work, since it's paid really represents corporate philanthropic giving in the form of your time that they are paying for, and therefore would not be considered within the scope of volunteering. And legally legally mandated service alternative to military service court ordered work that is imposed because you've committed some crime and you were given the chance to work it off by doing volunteer work. Mandatory legally mandatory activities, and because of that they, they lose the quality of being non compulsory, and therefore they are treated as outside the scope of this of this handbook. There are a number of borderline cases. What about help given to your extended family. And we talked about this already. It truly is very extended and does not typically count as part of the nuclear family or certainly the next of kin. Depending on the social mores of the country, it probably would not be included in the volunteering measurement. Interparenting is a difficult topic this is where somebody takes in a child who is somehow mistreated or is without a parent, or without both parents, and that child lives with a family for a period of time. Depending on the length of that time, it is either volunteering if the length is short and therefore is not this person does not become a part of the family, or is not included as volunteering. Foster parenting becomes a permanent situation that is the person the the youngster is living with the family. As a member of the family then that parenting that that family is providing is not any longer volunteering but rather help the ones family so these are tough choices tough decisions to make to figure out what is truly within the realm of volunteering. What about compensation of expenses that they go over a third of market wages. If you're working as a volunteer, but you're getting essentially payments compensation food even that is in excess of a third of market wages, can it still be called volunteering. There are countries in the world that are doing quote volunteering, where people are doing what they claim is volunteering, but they're essentially earning what is significant wage in that country, even though it's pretty low. They're getting food in a country that has significant food shortages. So, again, these are the dividing lines that the SNA requires that we impose in order to keep the clarity of the data, very, very certain. But if it's unclear if the activity is for others or for oneself so for example if you have a daycare center in which you have your own children as well as some other children from your neighborhood. Is this volunteering, or is it really something very different because you are taking care of your own children at the same time. So, the measurement of volunteering is not simple, but we have developed a set of guidelines, the guidelines are spelled out in this new United Nations TSE sector handbook. They were initially developed and put into something called the ILO international labor organization manual on the measurement of volunteer work. And that manual was essentially incorporated into this 2018 TSE sector satellite account handbook and is available for you online. And we are also as I mentioned at the beginning and as I have reminded you in our previous workshops. We have begun to provide technical assistance and training to statistical agencies, working with them directly on the implementation of the handbook. We are under contract in a number of countries such as Spain and Luxembourg and Poland to work with the statistical agencies to make sure that everybody is implementing these guidelines the same way. The way we do that is we get, we have a number of field instruments in which we put people through the process of making these decisions against their own statistical systems and legal systems. We work with them to clarify the meaning of these different provisions. And through that means we assure everybody that the data that will come out of this process will be consistent from place to place which is a bedrock notion of the SNA. So I appreciate your attention and I look forward to continuing this series of workshops focusing next on the issue of classification of both of the institutional units and of the workforce and volunteer activity. Thank you so much.