Why should governments be interested in promoting volunteering? Especially when some voluntary activity by NGOs can be seen as a challenge to the authority of the state?

There are two major benefits of volunteering. First, an economic one: volunteering makes an important economic contribution to society. Activities undertaken by volunteers would otherwise have to be funded by the state or by private capital. Volunteering adds to the overall economic output of a country and reduces the burden on government spending.

But volunteering has a second and perhaps more important benefit. Volunteering helps in the building of strong and cohesive communities. It creates trust between fellow citizens and helps develop norms of solidarity and reciprocity which are essential to stable communities.

In Holland, 43 per cent of the population is involved in some sort of voluntary work; the average time invested in this was four hours per week.

Based on the number of volunteers and the time invested on average per week is it possible to calculate the economic contribution: €9 billion.

Volunteers often also contribute the use of their capital equipment, particularly their own infrastructure - office-space, equipment and vehicles - to volunteering activities. They do not claim social benefits.

Although volunteering undoubtedly makes an important economic contribution, we know very little about the scale of its impact. For example, a survey of volunteering in the UK in 1997 suggested that half the adult population took part in voluntary work, contributing an Lm25 billion to GDP. A survey in eight EU countries found an average participation rate in volunteering of 23 per cent.

The failure of governments to measure the contribution of volunteering to the GDP is a sign of the low status in which it is held. Volunteering remains a marginal and invisible activity. In this respect it has a good deal in common with household work. The women's movement has long argued for a value to be placed on the contribution made (mainly by women) in the domestic economy as an important first step in the legitimisation of such work. So long as women's household work remains invisible in economic terms, governments will continue to ignore it. The same is surely true of volunteering. In the absence of regular, reliable information on its extent and contribution, governments will continue to overlook its importance and fail to take account of the volunteering dimension when developing policy.

Economic analysis in the US concludes that there are highly cost-effective and "demonstrate enviable returns" on expenditure. An analysis of public investment in volunteering estimated an economic payback of Lm50 for every Lm1 invested by the government on volunteering; without it the government would have to spend millions caring for people, reported the BBC, concluding that "investment in carers looks like being good value for money".