Tracking Time or Losing It? Rethinking How We Measure Volunteering

At the start of 2025, I made a pledge to volunteer more in alignment with my values. To track my progress, I set up a cute little tracker in my journal. It was fun—until it wasn’t.

Like many people, I juggle a million things, rely heavily on reminders, and need a sense of purpose or reward to follow through with simple tasks. After a couple of months, tracking my hours felt pointless. It delivered no sense of achievement, so I stopped.

That got me thinking: Are we asking too much of volunteers when we ask them to track their hours?

Your system might automatically log hours on sign-in or require manual input - but unless volunteers know their time is valued, celebrated, and making a difference, what’s the incentive?

If tracking volunteer hours matters to your organisation, the responsibility shouldn't rest solely on the volunteer.

Let’s flip the script. Build systems that value people over data. Make it easy, or make it automatic, or just don't do it!

If your hour-tracking process is more burdensome than beneficial for volunteers, how can you redesign it?