Third Sector Impact aims to convince statistics agencies to integrate the UN NPI Handbook and ILO Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Workabout, which will be updated and extended as part of the project. TSI will showcase how agencies can best track the impact of the third sector in the future. Statisticians will find relevant documentation on these pages.

Articles

Measuring the Performance of Voluntary Organisations
Jeremy Kendall, Martin Knapp, Public Management, Vol 2, Issue 1, 2000, 105-132

The primary aim of this article is to develop criteria for measuring the ‘performance’ of voluntary organizations. This is undertaken by marrying relevant international theoretical literature suggestive of their roles and contributions with a ‘production of welfare’ approach, which has a proven track record in the evaluation of human services. Eight domains of performance are suggested (economy, effectiveness, efficiency choice /pluralism; equity; participation; innovation and advocacy), embracing twenty-two separate indicator sets. This article is available for download:
Kendall_Knapp_2000_Measuring the Performance of Voluntary Organisations

Measuring Social Consequences of Non-Profit Institution Activities: A Research Note
S. Wojciech Sokolowski, The Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, Working Paper 50, February 2014

This paper proposes a model of a standardized measurement of social benefits created by NPI activities for the purpose of macro-economic analysis. The proposed model draws from the program logic model and the supply and use and input/output tables used in the System of National Accounts. It is based on standard definitions of NPI central products (material output) and social beneficiaries of those products (outcomes), and allocates quantitative shares of those products to different types of beneficiaries. Seven material output/outcome matrices for the industries in which NPIs tend to concentrate areproposed: education, health care, social assistance, housing construction and services, communitydevelopment, culture, arts and recreation and membership organizations. The paper is available for download:
WP50_Sokolowski_Measuring Social Consequences of Non-Profit Institution Activities

The Nonprofit Sector: For What and for Whom?
Salamon, Lester M., Leslie C. Hems, and Kathryn Chinnock The Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, Working Paper 37, 2000

The purpose of this paper is to discuss ways to assess the impact of the nonprofit sector in a systematic fashion in close to 40 countries throughout the world. The discussion begins by sketching the criteria that any such assessment should strive to meet. It then outlines the approach utilized to meet these criteria, and finally summarizes the results of this work.
Six criteria guided impact analysis: beyond outputs; systematic; more than a celebration; theory-based; relative impact; comparative. The paper is avaliable for download:
Salamon et.al._WP37_The Nonprofit Sector: For What and for Whom?

Statistical Tools

Handbook on Nonprofit Institutions in the System of National Accounts.
United Nations, 2003

This handbook offers countries a standard set of guidelines for gathering data on the nonprofit sector so that it can be seen and analyzed as a distinct sector in national economic accounts. The resulting “satellite accounts on non-profit institutions” pull together a much more comprehensive and reliable picture of the civil society sector than previously available, making it possible to gauge its contribution and track its evolution over time. Free download in English, French, Russian, Arabic, Chinese.
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/pubs/gesgrid.asp?id=329

Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work
International Labour Organization (2011)
The manual guides countries in generating systematic and comparable data on volunteer work via regular supplements to labour force or other household surveys. The objective is to make available comparative cross-national data on a significant form of work that is growing in importance but that is often ignored or rarely captured in traditional economic statistics.
http://www.ilo.org/stat/Publications/WCMS_162119/lang–en/index.htm

National accounts of the Third Sector

Italy

Istat Italy published a set of information concerning the human resources employed (paid workers and volunteers) in nonprofitorganisations, their services offered, communication tools, and financial resources (revenues and expenditures, funding sources, fundraising techniques).
Nonprofit institutions profile – Oct 2014 – Italy

Outcomes of the first survey on voluntary work in Italy, based on cooperation of Istat, CSVnet (National Coordination of Volunteer Support Centres) and the Volontariato e Partecipazione Foundation.
Unpaid activities to benefit others – Jul 2014 – Italy

Norway

The Satellite account for non-profit institutions in Norway 2012, published in 2014, not only shows the growth of employment in the non-profit sector compared to for-profit and public sectors, it also includes the funding of non-profit institutions’ activities for the first time.

Satellite account for non-profit institutions – 2012 – Norway

Poland

Poland’s statistical agency GUS has been building an elaborate body of statistical data on nonprofit institutions over the past decade and recently became the first country to implement the ILO Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work.
Volunteering and other types of unpaid work outside households – 2011 – Poland

Ireland

In July 2015 Ireland published information about wellbeing and volunteerig for the first time, after including questions about volunteering to a national household survey. The survey generated data about the number of persons that volunteer, the number of hours they dedicate and the types of activity carried out. The survey was conducted from July to September 2013. Data is broken down by demographic variables, employment status, and geographic characteristics.
Central Statistics Office Ireland on Volunteering and Wellbeing

Events on third sector measurement

Italy

“Il valore economico e Sociale del lavoro volontario”, Istat Italy, 2 December 2014, Rome
Istat Italy conference presents first analyses carried out with ILO module on collecting data on volunteering, developed in collaboration with TSI consortium member Lester Salamon.
Istat Italy conference Volunteering

Belgium

“Putting the third sector on the statistical map of Europe”, TSI and DG RTD, 1 June 2015, Brussels
TSI Meeting with representatives of the European Economic and Social Council, the International Labour Organization, the directorates of the European Commission Education & Culture (EAC), Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion (EMPL) and Internal Market, Industry, Social Entrepreneurship and SMEs (GROW), the statistical institutes of nine European countries, and researchers from eight European universities to discuss the state of art of data collection on the third sector in Europe.
http://thirdsectorimpact.eu/news/a-statistical-revolution-in-data-on-the-third-sector-in-europe/