Assessment of the labour potential and economic effects of volunteer services

The article considers briefly research results of the foreign experience in registration and analysis of the economic effects of volunteer services, in particular, possible levels of research, methods of cost calculation of the economic effect and methods of data collection. The research results became a basis for the methodology of study of the volunteering in Russia; in 2011 it was tested in the course of the project of the Federal State Statistics Service aimed to develop the national statistic system.