10  Guild et al (2014). 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  •  The private value of volunteering activities, in particular the benefits felt by volunteers themselves; and  •  The social value of volunteering activities, as societal gains may be a multiple of economic and private benefits. I want to build up a quantitative picture of these various layers. They take us from a conventional, GDP-centric measure of economic value through to a more fashionable, wellbeing-centric measure of social welfare. In other words, this approach combines elements of both the old and the new when determining the value of volunteering. Before diving into methodology, let me just highlight a few general caveats: •  First, these value layers – economic, private and social – may not be entirely distinct. For example, the private benefits from volunteering may be the very reason people volunteer in the first place and create economic value. So we should hesitate before simply adding these benefits together. I will try to resist doing so, but will probably fail. •  Second, value measurement becomes harder the further out you go from the centre of the onion. We can make reasonably informed guesses about the economic value of volunteering, by adapting national income accounting techniques. And we can construct some reasonable proxies for private benefits from various surveys. But we have only piecemeal evidence on measuring the social value of volunteering. This, in short, is a fledgling science.
This has facilitated the growth of entrepreneurs by providing finance to about 1.3 million crowdfunding projects. Crowdfunding platforms also allow entrepreneurs to closely engage with their customers – themselves investors – to shape and refine product ideas. A good example is the role played by crowdfunding in the rise of virtual reality (VR), which was largely ignored by traditional funders after its disappointing performance in the 1990s. Oculus Rift or the VR technology as we know would never have happened without crowdfunding. Such success stories can be an inspiration for our SMEs. With SMEs in Malaysia facing difficulty in obtaining capital and mezzanine financing, crowdfunding and P2P platforms can be further explored to meet such funding needs. Third, the matching of funds enabled by fintech also has great application within the social financing space. In particular, we see the potential of digitising the collection and utilisation of zakat, waqaf and sadaqah as holding great promise. The efficiency and transparency enabled by technology not only provides greater convenience to customers, but more importantly, builds public trust and confidence in the system. In turn, this will see wider participation and greater contributions towards social impact initiatives such as those to improve education, widen access to healthcare and extend humanitarian relief. We are already seeing encouraging developments in this space. For example, SkolaFund raised over RM200,000 in 2016 to fund 25 students from less-privileged families studying in universities and colleges in Malaysia.