20th March 2025
The social value of volunteering in Scotland
How do you feel when you volunteer? Does it make you feel ‘better’ than you did before? Maybe you feel like your life has purpose, or you feel better for having interacted with others, or the satisfaction of helping someone, or contributing to a cause greater than yourself.
Research shows that volunteering is good for you – it has tangible mental and physical health benefits. It is good for your wellbeing.
So that boost to your mood you get after volunteering – that’s you experiencing a boost to your wellbeing. And if you are volunteering regularly, it all adds up.
What if I told you that we could quantify that difference to your wellbeing?
And, not only that, we can put a monetary value on that increased wellbeing? We’ve used an approach to wellbeing valuation that uses statistical analysis of large and existing questionnaire datasets to value the effect on wellbeing from changes in life circumstances and life satisfaction.
We’ve estimated that volunteering at least once a week with a group or organisation (formal volunteering) is worth £1,000 per person per year in terms of the increased wellbeing they experience. That’s roughly equivalent to a £20 a week boost to your wellbeing.
Across Scotland this translates to over half a billion pounds worth of increased wellbeing for Scottish volunteers (who volunteer at least once a week). Combined with the time Scottish volunteers contribute weekly; this is a contribution of £2.3 billion in terms of economic and social value (note that this does not account for the costs of volunteering). That’s equivalent to the gross value added on the arts, entertainment and recreation industry to the Scottish economy (worth £2.1 billion).
How did we find this out?
There are many different ways you can think about the value of volunteering. There’s the time people spend volunteering and the services that can’t run without them. Social value takes this a step further and builds on that to think about the impact of volunteering on people’s wellbeing.
There is a whole field of economics dedicated to this kind of social value research – wellbeing economics. The UK Government uses this to estimate the wellbeing impact of social initiatives. It is a recognised and rigorous approach to research.
All this got us thinking – we know how valuable Scotland’s volunteers are… But do the people who make decisions that impact on people’s ability to volunteer or their volunteer experience? I’m not sure that they all do – maybe a broader understanding of the impact of Scottish volunteers, their social value, is needed to show just how important they are.
So, that’s what we did. Volunteer Scotland partnered with State of Life, who are specialists in this kind of work, to estimate the social value of volunteering in Scotland.
We looked at two national datasets: the Scottish Household Survey from 2022 and the Understanding Society Scottish dataset. These datasets ask slightly different questions about wellbeing and volunteering, so we wanted to see if the findings were consistent across them both.
First, we looked to see if Scottish volunteers reported having better wellbeing than people who don’t volunteer, accounting for other characteristics of volunteers that might make them more likely to report higher wellbeing.
We also wanted to see whether people who volunteer more regularly report having better wellbeing. Both datasets revealed the same conclusion: people who volunteer in a group or with an organisation weekly have the highest wellbeing. This type of volunteering is known as ‘formal’ volunteering. And this difference is statistically significant, meaning we can be sure this result is credible and able to be attributed to the act of volunteering (rather than anything else). This research focuses on formal volunteering, that is volunteering with a club, group or organisation, which is only one of the many ways people can volunteer.
Third, we wanted to put a monetary value on this higher wellbeing for volunteers. This is called ‘wellbeing valuation’ and we used the government-endorsed WELLBY method. Both datasets produced the same result – the social value of weekly formal volunteering is worth £1000 per person, per year.
If we scale that to the population of Scotland, where approximately 530,000 adults (16+) formally volunteer weekly, this amounts to an annual social benefit of £530 million.
That’s incredible!
So what?
These results are consistent and clear: volunteering is good for your wellbeing, and it is worth £1000 per volunteer, per year for people who volunteer weekly.
And if we add in the economic value of the hours people spend formally volunteering weekly (£1.8 billion), it means that Scottish volunteers are contributing £2.3 billion to the Scottish economy in terms of their time and higher wellbeing.
We can have confidence in these findings because they are supported by multiple Scottish datasets and statistical methods.
We think this is ground-breaking evidence for Scotland of the impact of volunteering (which is consistent with UK and global findings). We want decision-makers to recognise the wellbeing benefits of volunteering when introducing or reviewing relevant policy or legislation, including around social prescribing, community health, and employability.
Bethany Sikes
Research and Policy Manager