The value of volunteering, but for whom? New facts and figures on formal and informal volunteering in the Czech Republic Tereza Pospíšilová Department of Civil Society Studies Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague February 22, 2011

Representative survey of 3811 citizens of the Czech Republic 15 years and over (including a sample of 1132 volunteers) carried out in the autumn 2009 by Factum Invenio agency. The survey was carried out within the „Patterns and Values of Volunteering Project“ financed by the financial mechanisms of EEA and Norway and the state budget of the Czech Republic through the Research Support Fund. Source of data

Physical capital – Human capital – Economic capital – Social capital – Cultural capital Volunteers – Organisations – Service users - Community Source: Volunteering Impact Assessment Toolkit, 2004 (cit. in Rochester et al., 2010) The value of volunteering

Who tends to be excluded from formal volunteering? People older than 65 and people with low education. Is informal volunteering the solution? No…

Informal volunteering (above all helping neighbours) is more differentiated by age and sex – it depends more on the life cycle and traditional division of roles in the family. Informal volunteering does not correlate positively with higher/university education – unlike formal volunteering, it is not related to forms of capital generated by higher education.

Formal and informal volunteering represent distinct, different patterns. However, there is a large overlap: 50% of formal volunteers also help informally. We need to focus on the narrower group of strictly informal volunteers to see if it represents a distinctive value for volunteers or the community.

Thank you! Tereza Pospíšilová