How to Verify Corporate Volunteer Hours for Your ESG Report

For volunteer hours to go into a sustainability report, they need to answer three questions: did the activity actually take place, how many people actually showed up and for how long, and who confirmed the figure? Photos and a sign-in sheet can partly answer the first two. The third usually needs a record from the other side to compare against.

Why photos and a sign-in sheet aren't enough

After a volunteer day, you typically have three things: event photos, a sign-in sheet, and a certificate of appreciation.

All of them are valuable, but each says only so much. Photos show that people came, but not how long they stayed. Sign-in sheets are usually signed at registration or on arrival, which isn't the same as actual hours of participation. A certificate of appreciation is a kind gesture, not a record.

Usually this isn't a problem. But in situations like these, you'll need a fuller record:

• Your sustainability team needs to report the figure under GRI 413-1 (local community engagement), stating the reporting period and calculation method.
• A manager asks, "How did we get these 200 person-hours?"
• An external assurance or evaluation process samples your supporting evidence.

One activity, a separate record on each side

Selvans's approach is to keep two independent records of the same activity, then check them against each other.

On the farm side: the partner farm notes the visiting company, the actual number of attendees and the activity hours in that week's weekly report. Any weekly report that includes a corporate visit takes effect only after an administrator reviews it manually.

On the company side: the Selvans back office records which company the group belongs to, which travel agency organized it, and the declared number of people and hours.

Five steps to match the records

The two records are checked against each other on these five points, in order:

1. Which farm and which week the activity belongs to: only with the week can we find the matching weekly report.
2. That week's report has been fully reviewed: reports still being filled in or under review aren't counted yet.
3. The weekly report records this visit: the farm side has to have a record too, so the two can be matched.
4. It records the same company: one farm may host two companies in the same week, so names are compared to make sure hours aren't credited to the wrong company.
5. The person-hours differ by no more than 10%: if the company's declared figure and the weekly report's figure differ by more than 10%, they're treated as not yet matched.

Once all five steps are confirmed, the activity is marked "verified," and a ready-to-cite disclosure sentence is generated that notes which weekly report it corresponds to.

When the numbers don't match

If the two records haven't matched yet, the activity doesn't produce a disclosable figure, and the company's self-reported figure isn't used in its place.

The back office lists the reason, for example a weekly report not yet reviewed, a mismatch in the company name, or a large difference in headcount between the two sides. Someone then checks which side needs correcting. After the correction, the records are matched again, and once they pass, a figure is produced.

We allow a tolerance because the company side often has the number of sign-ups, while the farm side records the number of people who actually showed up, and the two can naturally differ. With no tolerance at all, normal differences would get blocked; too wide a tolerance, and verification loses its meaning. 10% is the current setting. It's written into the system, not decided on site.

A rule we haven't needed so far

To be honest, this matching process hasn't stopped a single activity so far.

Up to now, the two records for every corporate volunteer day have matched: however many people signed up, that's how many walked into the field. This probably has to do with how groups visit: they travel out together and head back together, so people rarely leave partway through.

So why keep this step? Because the question it answers isn't "was there a problem with this event?" but "if there were a problem, would you be able to spot it?" A safeguard that only kicks in when something goes wrong can look like extra work most of the time. But the figures in a sustainability report get signed off, and whoever signs has every right to ask: what happens if the two sides don't match?

Our answer: we don't produce a figure yet. We list each side's number and the percentage gap, someone follows up to clarify, and once it's corrected we run the match again. The current tolerance is 10%, written into the system's settings, not decided on site.

We hope this rule never gets used. But it needs to be there.

What this record shows

What it can show: the date and partner farm where the activity took place, how many people actually attended and for how long, who reported it, who checked it and who reviewed it, and which weekly report it traces back to.

What needs to be labeled accurately:

• This data is self-declared by Selvans and our partner farms, with supporting documents and an audit trail, and has not been reviewed by an accounting firm or verification body.
• The supporting evidence covers only the social-welfare organizations' farms that have contract-farming agreements with Selvans, not your company's overall supply chain.
• What we label is "data quality," meaning how a figure was produced and who confirmed it. It is not an assurance level in the sense of ISAE 3000 or ISSA 5000.

What your company receives

Once the activity is over and the records have been matched, your company receives a social engagement evidence report (PDF) that includes:

• Participation details: each session listed with date, farm, activity, headcount and hours, along with the corresponding weekly report.
• Disclosure framework mapping: mapping to GRI 413-1 and the SDGs, with the data quality of each item.
• Ready-to-cite disclosure text: a sentence covering the period, number of sessions, participants, person-hours and data source that you can put straight into your sustainability report.
• Nature of the data and scope: a clear statement that this is self-declared and has not been reviewed by an external assurance provider.
• The three parties' roles: Selvans handles arrangements and data consolidation, the social-welfare organization's farm is the activity site, and the travel agency is the organizer.

FAQ

Who confirms the volunteer hours?

They're recorded in that farm's weekly report for the week and take effect after an administrator reviews them manually. The figure entered by the company is the "declared value," used for comparison against the weekly report; it never becomes the basis for external disclosure on its own.

What if the company's headcount differs from the farm's?

If the difference is within 10%, the farm's reviewed figure is used. If it's more than 10%, the back office lists both figures and the gap, and once it's clear which side needs correcting, the records are matched again.

Roughly how many person-hours can one volunteer day produce?

For 20 people joining for half a day (4 hours), that's 80 person-hours. Actual figures are based on values reviewed manually by an administrator, not estimates from sign-ups.

We already follow ISO 20400. Do we still need this record?

ISO 20400 is guidance on sustainable procurement systems; this record adds evidence of what actually happened on the ground, and the two can be used together. How the data quality of each figure is determined is explained in our methodology, and the live public version is on our impact dashboard.

Scope and limitations

Before putting anything in your sustainability report, please keep these points in mind:

1. The supporting evidence in this article covers only the supply chain of Selvans's partner farms, not your company's other suppliers.
2. Selvans provides reference material on implementation. It does not constitute compliance certification, and whether to disclose remains your company's decision.
3. The data is self-declared by Selvans and our partner farms, with supporting documents and an audit trail, and has not been reviewed by an external assurance provider. Species identification uses iNaturalist, and pesticide residues are tested by an external lab.
4. Platform-wide totals are not the same as any single company's results; what your company can cite is the share attributed to it based on how you partner with us.
5. Please don't use the data in this article for carbon sink or carbon neutrality claims. Those require a methodology, a baseline and proof of additionality, and we have none of the three.