That hard-headed economist I mentioned earlier would at this stage spring to their feet. Brandishing revealed preference theory, they would say this is obvious – that it is these very benefits that explain why the volunteer army exists in the first place. And, once again, they would largely be wrong. For research has shown that people tend systematically to under-estimate the positive effect for them of giving to others. In a nice experiment, people were randomly assigned $ to spend, either on themselves or others. Those who were told to spend it on others subsequently reported significantly higher subjective well-being ex-post, contrary to their expectations ex-ante. 23 This means that volunteer army would possibly be larger still if individuals had greater selfawareness of the private benefits of volunteering. When it comes to volunteering, preferences may be as much concealed as revealed. 24 Social value of volunteering Finally, let’s consider the social welfare benefits of volunteering. Why might these differ from the economic and private benefits? And by how much? Let’s take a simple example. Consider a volunteer who helps out a charity providing support services for the homeless. Is the value of this activity captured by the hours spent volunteering? By the amount it would have cost to hire that person to provide that help? By the amount that person themselves benefit from volunteering? Well, all of the above are important and large, as I have shown. But they would still potentially significantly under-estimate the value society should place on this activity.
Its aim, then and now, is to match economist volunteers into projects in the charitable sector, often to work on measuring the social impact of charities’ activities. In effect, PBE is a match-maker between economists and charities. Why might we match-make between the uplifting art of charities and the dismal science of economics? Well, our hope was that there were significant gains from trade: on the charitable side, because of the rising pressures many charities have felt to demonstrate the impact of their interventions; and on the economist side, because of the usefulness of their applied skillset for tackling measurement issues of just this type. Five years on, the heartening news for both sides is that these theoretical gains from trade appear to have been realised in practice. PBE has worked with over 170 charities, spanning such diverse issues as homelessness, eating disorders, child exploitation and prison rehabilitation. And we have matched over 170 economist volunteers into around 85 projects, with a large lump of unused economist labour waiting in the wings. PBE’s experience illustrates nicely some of the broader points I wish to discuss about the value of volunteering – value not just to the recipient but also to the provider and to wider society. In other words, in giving our time through volunteering, we – individually and societally – stand to receive. One of the aims of this lecture is to demonstrate that the societal gains from volunteering are potentially large – and also largely under-appreciated. Certainly, they are not well measured.