Since the 1980s, research has focused on national organisations' involvement in policy-making, and since 1998, surveys of local branches have provided insights into changes in the organisational community. The Voluntary Register, established in 2009, has increasingly enabled the use of big data, and data from organisational surveys are linked to several registers to provide more accurate estimates. Data from the Voluntary Register about board members are linked to Statistics Norway's registers with individual data to analyse social background in more detail than has been possible through surveys.
Organisational surveys and voluntary effort surveys complement each other and constitute the most important data series for understanding changes in the activities of voluntary organisations and their societal impacts. Organisational surveys cover membership activities, events, internal democracy, collaboration with other organisations, businesses, and public authorities, as well as involvement in policy-making. This activity is a prerequisite for the civil society role of voluntary organisations as a link to policy-making and for promoting social, physical, cultural, and religious expression.
New Projects
Three projects will illuminate these changes in the voluntary sector. The project "Changing Organisational Landscape 2027" will collect new data from organisational surveys at local and national levels to monitor changes in activity, organisation, and governance by comparing them with previous surveys. The project "Changes in Social Composition and Representativeness Among Board Members and Leaders" will gather new data on the social background of board members in organisations in the Voluntary Register in collaboration with Statistics Norway Microdata. This will allow for extending the time series from 2010 to 2021 and conducting more detailed analyses. The third subproject, "The Employer Role of Volunteer Organisations", will examine the significance of increased professionalisation and the role of paid employment as an input factor in volunteering.