Envisioning Decentralised Volunteering with Distributed Ledger Technologies

In this paper, we consider the potential opportunities and implications of emerging distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) in the voluntary sector. By focusing on the potential for new forms of decentralised identity management, we highlight opportunities for volunteers to generate, share and prove certain attributes of their identity as a volunteer without relying upon either any single volunteering organisation. From a volunteer’s perspective, this replication of administration procedures, checks and validations is a friction within the onboarding process. We hence provide an initial conceptualisation of DLTs for the sector, and describe innovative workshop methods we have developed to explore these technologies with volunteers and organisations. Reporting on our initial findings from these engagements, we finally identify several avenues for future research to inform the design and development of DLT systems in voluntary contexts.