Work Area Description

There are no united systematic methodological guidelines and empirical analyses of third sector impact in Europe. TSI is going to change this.

  • TSI aims to assess existing approaches to measure the multiple impacts of the third sector and volunteering.
  • It works towards finding consensus within the research community and among third-sector leaders on the most promising approaches to third sector impact assessment.
  • TSI will recommend new and unified impact indicators to statistical bodies in Europe.

Objectives and Goals

TSI focusses on impacts of third sector activity on:

  • the economy in terms of employment, worker integration, and urban regeneration;
  • social capital and trust;
  • civic engagement;
  • innovation;
  • sense of well-being among European citizens.

This task will be carried out in three steps:

  1. Cross-national surveys or combinations of national surveys allow analysis of individual effects of volunteering, employment and participation in third sector organizations for various types of socio-economic impacts in European countries.
  2. Differences in impact will be explained through macro-level comparisons across countries and categories of third sector organizations.
  3. Long-term development trends will be analysed with the help of surveys of local associations with time-series data from some of the partner countries, i.e. to uncover shifts between organization categories, characteristics of the surviving organizations etc.

Goal is the development of measures for the most significant potential impact variation between European countries and regions.

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