Measuring Civil Society and Volunteering

The civil society sector contributes as much to the gross domestic product in a wide range of countries including Australia as do the construction and finance industries, and double the utilities industries according to a Johns Hopkins University report. The report also details the role of volunteering within this contribution.

According to this report, the civil society sector, comprising private, Not for Profit hospitals, schools, social service agencies, symphonies, environmental groups, and many others, accounts on average for 5 percent of the GDP in the countries covered, and reaches over 7 percent in some countries, such as Canada and the United States.

By comparison, the utilities industry in these same countries accounts on average for only 2.3 percent of GDP, the construction industry for 5.1 percent, and the financial intermediation industry embracing banks, insurance companies, and financial services firms, for 5.6 percent.

Other findings in this report, which covers Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Japan, New Zealand and the United States, include:

• Philanthropy, including volunteering, generates at most only about one-third of NFP revenue. The balance comes from government and fees;
• Within philanthropy, gifts of time (i.e. volunteering) outdistance gifts of cash by almost two to one;
• Volunteer work accounts, on average, for about one-quarter of the economic contribution of NFPs, though this reaches 50 percent in New Zealand.
• For the five countries on which historical data are available (Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Japan and the United States), NFPs have recently been growing at an average rate that is twice the growth rate of GDP (8.1 percent per year vs. 4.1 percent);
• NFPs account for the lion's share of value added in many critical human service fields. In Belgium, for example, they provide more than 40 percent of the value added in health and more than two-thirds of the value added in social services;
• The activities on most of the NFP organisations concentrated in the fields of health, education and social services, each showing a great deal of variation in the contribution to ‘value added'.

Download the full report here (opens in a new browser window)

For further information

Contact	:	The Centre for Civil Society Studies, The Johns Hopkins University
Email	:	ccss@jhu.edu