By any reasonable standard, volunteerism is one of the largest yet least understood systems underpinning global stability. The State of the World’s Volunteerism Report, recently published by United Nations Volunteers (UNV), suggests that roughly 2.1 billion people—about one third of the world’s working-age population—engage in some form of volunteering over the course of a year. Volunteerism is, therefore, not a marginal hobby of the middle class but a mass civic activity. This includes not only the familiar UN or NGO volunteer, but also the neighbour organizing food distribution, the youth coordinating mutual aid, the women maintaining informal safety nets in communities the state rarely reaches, and the corporate volunteer working online to share knowledge with a remote community.