Volunteering Data
Standardise how volunteering opportunities are described to make them easily discoverable, governable, and usable across tools and platforms.
Contribute to the standard: 
Purpose
In England, 24.8 million adults volunteer at least once annually, providing essential support in their communities, from crisis response to helping vulnerable people. This activity delivered an economic value of £24.69 billion in 2021/22. However, systemic barriers prevent volunteering from reaching its full potential for individuals, communities, and the economy.
There is a fragmented landscape of volunteering opportunities spread across 47 brokerage platforms, with limited ability to share data. Volunteering data is often confined to organisational ‘siloes,’ making it difficult to publish, find, and access available roles.
To address these hidden barriers, the ODI is collaborating with Do IT and Team Kinetic on a project commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The goal is to enhance the accessibility of volunteering data, making it easier for people to find opportunities and for organisations to attract the help they need.
The volunteering and social action ontology aims to standardise the representation of volunteering opportunities and volunteer-involving organisations so that data and associated tooling become reusable and can be shared across the Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector.
Standard data models designed to address the challenges faced by a sector are the base for information systems interoperability. Their adoption lowers both the cost and technical barrier for entry into a data ecosystem.
The adequacy of a standard model enables simple solutions to use cases that may otherwise be challenging to address.
Ultimately, information systems relying on adequate standards enable a diverse, equitable and inclusive data ecosystem allowing us to focus time and efforts on users and improving processes that directly address their needs.
Process
Standards must be grounded in practical knowledge and experience of the sector they’re designed for. Subject Matter Experts (SME), that is, a diverse group of people with varied and extensive experience of the sector, are the first point of contact in any standardisation effort. SMEs shared knowledge constitutes the base and justification for every data modelling decision in a standard.
Following that principle, the volunteering and social action ontology is developed in the open with volunteering specialists, software providers, and data experts, bringing the necessary domain expertise to collaborate on the standardisation effort.
The landscape review of the VCSE sector helped identify use cases to inform the focus of the standardisation effort.
The volunteering data standards working group was formed to gather feedback and drive the standard in the right direction.
A Hackathon brought together SMEs to raise awareness of the standardisation effort, give practical usage to our first draft standard data model, and inform the direction of our efforts (see also open data infrastructure for volunteering hackathon).
License
Unless otherwise specified, all content in this website and any copies are subject to Crown Copyright under the Open Government License v3.
Any code is dual licensed under the MIT license and the Open Government License v3.