What are the consequences of increased professionalisation of volunteering?
Over time, there has been an increasing professionalisation of voluntary and non-profit organisations in Norway. Previous research shows that paid employment within these organisations has grown, although core activities are still predominantly based on volunteer work, excluding non-profit welfare producers. Professionalisation can be important for coordinating activities and recruiting members and volunteers, but it can also bring changes that affect their operational methods and distinctiveness.
Employees and volunteers in organisations may have different concerns, motivations, and operational logics, which can complement each other but also create conflict. International research has indicated that tensions can often arise between employees and volunteers. How the interplay between employees and volunteers unfolds, the division of labour between them, and how they collaborate can vary between different types of organisations. In Norway, the professionalisation of sports has been studied, but there is otherwise little research on this topic. With increasing professionalisation in the voluntary sector in Norway, these are important questions to address.
The project The Employer Role of Volunteer Organisations: The Relationship Between Employees and Volunteers explores how the professionalisation of organisations through the employment of paid staff affects voluntary organisations and their functioning. The project is an exploratory study to gain more knowledge on this topic.
Do tax deductions encourage more donations to non-profit causes?
Although Norway does not have a strong tradition of philanthropy, many people donate to voluntary organisations. A review of knowledge shows that the proportion of households that donate money to various causes increased from 51 percent in 1998 to 70 percent in 2014. Recent surveys suggest that this figure has remained stable, alongside an increase in the average amount donated over time. Part of the reason for this increase is that organisations have professionalised their fundraising efforts and strengthened their efforts to recruit sponsors and regular donors. This is interesting for two reasons: firstly, because volunteering has traditionally been based on communal work and not monetary donations; secondly, because there has historically been skepticism towards philanthropy in the Norwegian welfare society.
The money that voluntary organisations raise themselves, along with income from membership fees and communal work, is important to maintain the independent position of the voluntary sector. Voluntary policy also emphasises the importance of ensuring the organisations' independence from the public sector. The public sector seeks to support this through a scheme that provides tax deductions for donations to voluntary organisations. Although this scheme has existed for a long time, little is known about its actual effect on the population's willingness to donate. Over the last ten to fifteen years, the amount eligible for deduction has increased significantly, but it is unclear whether this has resulted in increased donations. International research also lacks knowledge about the effects of such schemes.
Against this background, we will investigate how these types of incentive schemes work. The project Effect of Tax Deduction Schemes and Incentives for Donations to Voluntary Organisations examines how willingness to donate varies according to socio-economic factors and measures the effect of tax deductions on whether and how much different groups donate to various types of organisations.
What are the effects of public grants and how can they be measured?
Voluntary organisations generate much of their income themselves, but public grants are also an important part of their revenue base. Surveys show that there has been a significant increase in public grants to voluntary organisations over time. This development reflects increasingly high expectations of what voluntary organisations should contribute to various societal areas. Public funding can strengthen the organisations' capacity to conduct activities and achieve their goals, but it can also affect their operational methods in more and less desired ways.
From a governmental perspective, grants play a central role by providing opportunities to support activities that promote various community-beneficial purposes, such as inclusion, public health, culture, and the environment. New research suggests that the management of support can vary between different fields, and different schemes can be characterized by very different designs. Much of the support for organisations is provided through large, publicly regulated schemes, but some are also allocated in collaboration with the sector itself and some through more targeted schemes. There is a need for a better understanding of how and to what extent grants and their management contribute to achieving political goals and whether they promote or hinder the organisations' capacities.
We will therefore develop methods to evaluate the impact of financial grants to voluntary organisations, to better assess how the funds reach their targets and to what extent they contribute to achieving societal goals. In the project Knowledge-Based Evaluations of the Relationship Between Grants to Voluntary Organisations and Desired Effects, we use data on government grants to the entire voluntary sector to develop and evaluate such methods.