There is a widely held perception that volunteering is a ‘good thing’ and that this confers benefits to both the beneficiaries and to the volunteers themselves. This includes a considerable amount of emerging evidence on the potential health and wellbeing benefits from volunteering.

However, Volunteer Scotland is aware that this evidence can be contradictory, and this has resulted in considerable uncertainty around what we mean by wellbeing, the nature of the benefits, who benefits, the possibility of losers as well as gainers and the invidious causality problem.

To help answer these questions Volunteer Scotland undertook a literature review during 2018, focused on the health and wellbeing impacts of formal volunteering on volunteers.

Read the full resource here: Volunteer Scotland | Help Make a Difference through Volunteering