There is a number that dominates how India talks about corporate social responsibility. It is the spend figure. How much a company spent on CSR, whether it met its statutory two percent obligation, how many crores went to which cause. The spend figure is reported in Board’s Reports, tracked by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, scrutinised by auditors, and cited in sustainability rankings. It is the unit by which Indian CSR is measured.
This article makes a different argument. The spend figure, while necessary, is an incomplete measure of what CSR actually produces. A company can spend its full obligation and produce very little durable change. Another can spend the same amount and produce significantly more, depending entirely on how the money is deployed and whether the company’s own people are involved in the work. The spend figure cannot distinguish between these two companies. It measures the input, not the engagement, and certainly not the outcome.
The argument here is that volunteer hours, the time a company’s own employees actually contribute to social impact work, deserve to be measured alongside spend as a core CSR metric. Not as a replacement for spend, which remains a statutory requirement and a necessary input, but as the underweighted dimension that reveals what spend alone cannot: whether the company is genuinely engaged in the work or merely funding it from a distance.
This is a thesis, not a compliance guide. It is written for the CSR head rethinking how to measure programme success, the CHRO connecting employee engagement to social impact, the sustainability officer building a richer reporting narrative, the founder thinking about what CSR is really for, and anyone interested in how Indian CSR might mature beyond the spend figure. It is an argument to consider, debate, and adapt, not a prescription.
A note on what this article is: This is an opinion and argument piece on CSR measurement, not legal, financial, or compliance guidance. The statutory CSR obligation under Section 135 of the Companies Act 2013 is measured in spend, and nothing in this article changes that legal requirement. Companies must continue to meet their statutory CSR obligations as defined by law. This article argues for supplementing the spend metric with a volunteer-hours metric for internal and narrative purposes, not for replacing any legal requirement. Consult your Company Secretary and Legal counsel on all statutory CSR matters.
The Problem With Spend as the Only Measure
The spend figure has real strengths as a measure. It is objective, auditable, comparable across companies, and tied to a clear statutory obligation. These strengths are why it became the dominant metric. But the same qualities that make spend easy to measure also make it a limited measure of what CSR produces.
Five limitations of spend as the sole measure are worth naming.
1. Spend Measures Input, Not Outcome
The spend figure tells you how much money entered the CSR system. It tells you nothing about what came out. Two companies spending identical amounts can produce wildly different outcomes depending on deployment quality, partner selection, and programme design. Spend cannot distinguish between them.
2. Spend Can Be Met Without Genuine Engagement
A company can meet its full statutory CSR obligation by writing a cheque to an implementing agency and having no further involvement. The obligation is met, the spend is recorded, and the company’s own people may have no connection to the work at all. Spend rewards this disengaged compliance equally with deep engagement.
3. Spend Concentrates Attention on the End of the Year
Because spend is the measure, and because unspent CSR creates complications, attention concentrates on deploying the money before the financial year ends. This produces the well-documented pattern of CSR activity rushing into the final quarter, which weakens outcomes. A measure focused on engagement rather than deployment would distribute attention across the year.
4. Spend Treats All Deployment as Equal
The spend figure treats money deployed into a deeply engaged, well-monitored, multi-year programme as identical to money deployed into a one-day activity that fades. Both register as spend. The figure cannot see the difference in engagement or durability.
5. Spend Misses the Company’s Own People Entirely
The spend figure measures money. It does not measure whether the company’s own employees contributed time, skills, or presence to the work. A company whose employees volunteer thousands of hours and a company whose employees contribute nothing both register only their spend. The human engagement, which is often where the most durable value lies, is invisible to the metric.
What Volunteer Hours Measure That Spend Cannot
Volunteer hours, the actual time a company’s employees contribute to social impact work, measure a different and complementary dimension. Five things volunteer hours reveal that spend cannot.
1. Genuine Organisational Engagement
Volunteer hours measure whether the company is genuinely engaged in the work or merely funding it. A company whose employees contribute significant volunteer time is engaged in a way that a company writing a cheque is not. The hours reveal the depth of organisational commitment.
2. Employee Connection to Purpose
Volunteer hours reflect whether employees feel connected to the company’s social purpose. High volunteer participation signals an engaged workforce that finds meaning in the company’s social commitments. This connection has value for the company beyond the social impact itself.
3. Skills Contributed, Not Just Money
Volunteer hours can capture skills-based contribution, where employees bring professional skills to social impact work. A finance professional helping an NGO strengthen its financial systems, or a technology professional building a tool for a community programme, contributes value that money alone could not buy in the same way.
4. Distributed, Year-Round Engagement
Volunteer hours naturally distribute across the year rather than concentrating at year-end. A company building volunteer hours is engaged through the year, which produces more durable engagement than year-end spend deployment.
5. A Relationship Between the Company and the Community
Volunteer hours build a relationship between the company’s people and the communities the work serves. This relationship, built through presence and time, is qualitatively different from the relationship created by funding alone. It is often where the most lasting value and the deepest learning emerge.
The Case for Measuring Both Together
The argument here is not that volunteer hours should replace spend. Spend remains a statutory requirement and a necessary input; social impact work needs funding, and funding is measured in spend. The argument is that volunteer hours should be measured alongside spend, as a second core metric that reveals what spend cannot.
Measuring both together produces a richer picture than either alone.
- Spend reveals the financial commitment. How much the company is investing in social impact
- Volunteer hours reveal the human engagement. How much the company’s own people are involved in the work
- Together, they reveal the character of the CSR. A company high on both is deeply committed. A company high on spend but low on hours is funding from a distance. A company high on hours but low on spend is engaged but under-resourced. The two metrics together tell a story that neither tells alone
A company that measures both can ask better questions. Why are our volunteer hours low despite high spend? Are our employees connected to our CSR? Is our spend producing engagement or just meeting an obligation? These questions, which the spend figure alone cannot prompt, lead to stronger CSR.
How Volunteer Hours Could Be Measured
For volunteer hours to function as a metric, they need to be measured with discipline. The measurement is more straightforward than it might seem.
1. Per Capita Volunteer Hours
One useful measure is per capita volunteer hours, the total volunteer hours divided by the number of employees. This normalises for company size and allows comparison across years and across companies of different sizes. A company tracking its per capita volunteer hours across years can see whether engagement is rising or falling.
2. Total Volunteer Hours Contributed
The absolute total of volunteer hours contributed across the year is a measure of the company’s aggregate human engagement in social impact. For large companies, this number can be substantial and tells a powerful engagement story.
3. Skills-Based Volunteer Hours
Tracking skills-based volunteer hours separately captures the higher-value contribution where employees bring professional skills. This distinguishes between general hands-on volunteering and specialised skills contribution.
4. Participation Rate
The percentage of employees who participated in volunteering at all is a measure of how broadly the programme reaches the workforce. A programme where a small group volunteers many hours is different from one where many employees each volunteer some hours.
5. Hours by Cause or Programme
Tracking hours by cause area or programme reveals where the company’s human engagement is concentrated, which can be compared against where its spend is concentrated for a fuller picture.
How This Connects to BRSR and Existing Reporting
The argument for measuring volunteer hours is not disconnected from where Indian CSR reporting is already heading. The Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting framework, which applies to large listed companies, already gestures toward dimensions that volunteer hours capture.
- BRSR Principle 8 on inclusive growth and equitable development asks companies to report on their social impact engagement in ways that go beyond spend
- The employee engagement dimension that volunteer hours measure connects to the human capital and employee wellbeing dimensions that sustainability reporting increasingly emphasises
- The stakeholder relationship dimension that volunteer hours build connects to the stakeholder engagement principles in responsible business frameworks
Companies already building richer sustainability narratives can incorporate volunteer hours as a metric that strengthens the narrative beyond the spend figure, within the existing reporting direction rather than against it.
The Counterarguments, Considered Honestly
A thesis is stronger when it engages the counterarguments honestly. Several objections to measuring volunteer hours deserve consideration.
1. “Volunteer Hours Are Harder to Measure Than Spend”
This is true. Spend is a clean financial figure; volunteer hours require tracking systems and consistent recording. But the difficulty is operational, not fundamental. Many companies already track volunteer hours through their programmes, and the tracking is well within operational capability. The difficulty is a reason to build good measurement, not a reason to avoid the metric.
2. “Volunteer Hours Could Be Gamed”
Any metric can be gamed, including spend. The response is the same for both: measurement discipline and honest reporting. Volunteer hours recorded with the same discipline applied to spend are no more gameable than spend itself.
3. “Not All CSR Suits Volunteering”
This is a fair point. Some valuable CSR, such as infrastructure funding or research support, does not lend itself to employee volunteering. This is precisely why the argument is to measure hours alongside spend, not instead of it. Spend captures the dimensions that volunteering cannot; hours capture the dimensions that spend cannot. Both are needed.
4. “Volunteer Hours Favour Companies With Certain Workforces”
Companies with large office workforces may find volunteering easier to organise than companies with distributed or shift-based workforces. This is a real consideration, and it means volunteer hours should be interpreted in context, as all metrics should. It is a reason for nuanced interpretation, not for abandoning the metric.
What Changes When a Company Measures Volunteer Hours
When a company begins measuring volunteer hours alongside spend, several things tend to change.
- The conversation shifts from compliance to engagement. The question moves from “have we spent our obligation” to “are our people genuinely involved in our social impact”
- Attention distributes across the year. Building volunteer hours is a year-round activity, which reduces the year-end spend rush
- Employees become participants, not bystanders. Measuring hours signals that employee involvement matters, which encourages participation
- The CSR narrative becomes richer. A narrative built on both spend and hours tells a fuller story to stakeholders than spend alone
- The company learns more about its own impact. The relationship between spend and hours surfaces questions that lead to stronger programmes
A Thesis, Not a Prescription
This article is an argument, offered for consideration rather than as a definitive answer. The case for measuring volunteer hours alongside spend rests on a simple observation: the spend figure, while necessary, cannot see the human engagement that is often where the most durable CSR value lies. Measuring volunteer hours makes that engagement visible.
The argument is not that spend does not matter. Spend is a statutory requirement, a necessary input, and a meaningful measure of financial commitment. The argument is that spend is incomplete, and that volunteer hours measure the complementary dimension that completes the picture.
Whether a company adopts volunteer hours as a metric, and how it weighs the two measures, is a decision for that company, its leadership, and its CSR Committee. The thesis offered here is simply that the question is worth asking, and that the company that asks it is likely to understand its own CSR more deeply than the company that measures spend alone.
A Note on the Limits of This Argument
This article is an opinion and argument piece on CSR measurement, offered as of April 2026. It is not legal, financial, or compliance guidance, and it does not change any statutory requirement.
The statutory CSR obligation under Section 135 of the Companies Act 2013 is measured in spend, and companies must continue to meet that obligation as defined by law. The argument for measuring volunteer hours is an argument for supplementing the spend metric for internal management and narrative purposes, not for altering any legal requirement. Consult your Company Secretary, Chartered Accountant, and Legal counsel on all statutory CSR matters.
The measurement approaches discussed here are observations, not prescriptions, and should be adapted to each company’s specific context, workforce, and CSR programme.
What This Article Is Actually Saying
Three things are worth holding onto.
1. Spend is a necessary but incomplete measure of CSR. It measures the financial input but cannot see the human engagement, the deployment quality, or the durability of the outcome.
2. Volunteer hours measure the complementary dimension. They reveal whether the company’s own people are genuinely involved, whether employees feel connected to the company’s purpose, and whether a real relationship exists between the company and the community.
3. Measuring both together produces a richer, more honest picture. Not hours instead of spend, but hours alongside spend, as two metrics that together tell a story neither tells alone.
The companies that will lead Indian CSR in the coming years are likely to be those that look beyond the spend figure and ask the deeper question: not just how much did we spend, but how genuinely were we involved. Volunteer hours are how that question gets measured.
For more perspectives on CSR, social impact, and how Indian companies can deepen their engagement beyond the spend figure.
write to raghu@marpu.org.
Kadiri Raghu Vamsi 
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