Scope and Trends of Volunteering and Associations

This chapter has two themes: (1) the scope of formal and informal volunteering and of nonprofit, voluntary, Membership Associations (MAs) in the world, by which we mean the quantitative magnitudes of these phenomena at or near the present time, and (2) the long term and recent (past few decades) trends in these magnitudes. Global data are used, when available, but we also report data for world regions and for specific nations when feasible. We also report on estimated magnitudes of MA wealth and income, the economic value of volunteering, internal structures and processes of MAs, participation rates in MAs, methodological problems, and issues regarding computer mapping of data such at that presented in this chapter. Usable knowledge, future trends, and needed research are discussed