Report

Civic society and volunteering

This report from UK think tank PBE explores the economic contribution of civic society.

Civil society and volunteering are widely recognised as important generators of social value. From food banks to cancer research, local sports teams or youth clubs, it’s clear that civil society provides vital services, makes our communities stronger and boosts our wellbeing.

But civil society is rarely recognised for its economic contribution. This is a missed opportunity. In the most direct sense, official statistics undervalue the activity of civil society by excluding the value of volunteering from measures of economic activity (as international guidelines dictate). But doing so means that official statistics exclude a massive contribution to the UK economy – around 688 million volunteer labour hours in 2024.

When we adjust how the economic contribution of civil society is measured and include the value of volunteer labour, we find its actual contribution is almost double the official measure – shifting from 0.8% of the economy’s Gross Value Added (GVA) in official statistics to 1.5% in our adjusted measurement, nearly £40bn. This puts civil society’s economic contribution in line with the agriculture and car manufacturing industries combined.

Even with our conceptual adjustments, the figures in this paper underestimate the economic contribution of civil society. This is due to the difficulty in identifying non-profits organisations in national accounts data. Without a civil society satellite account, which captures non-profits across all sectors, we will never know the full extent of civil society’s economic contribution in the UK. International comparisons suggest the underestimate could be substantial.

In the 16 countries worldwide that have created their own satellite accounts, civil society and volunteering was found to make up between 1.6% and 8.1% of GDP.