A lot has been written about volunteering over the past few months, but we know that the big question in the voluntary sector is, how can we get more people to volunteer?
What has been written?
We have seen the results of the Community Life Survey published in February and now NCVO has released this year’s report on the Time Well Spent survey.
Findings from this research have been echoed at the national level through the Vision for Volunteering in England and Scotland’s Volunteering Action Plan.
For those of us working in the voluntary sector, these reports do not make great reading, but at the same time, they are not really telling us much that we didn’t already know.
If we want to get more people into volunteering, opportunities must match what people are looking for and we, as a sector, need to get better at assuring people that volunteering is for all.
This blog sets out 6 key points you need to think about when trying to answer this big question, with our own views and take on the situation, added in.
The pain you are feeling is real
We have heard from many local groups that volunteer recruitment and retention is an issue.
This is reflected in the findings from our research (full report to come soon). But a sneak peek shows that 73% of respondents have issues recruiting volunteers, which is slightly up from 2019. One comment included:
People who have returned to work post-pandemic are time-poor, reducing the amount of time they are able to spend volunteering or caring for their elderly relatives. This has an impact on the group who are fewer in number whilst being asked to help more frequently.
Supporting this is the Community Life Survey results, which show volunteering levels at the lowest rate since records began.
The issues are not impacting all organisations the same way but there is no doubt that who and how people volunteer has been impacted by the pandemic.
It really is about local
The time well-spent results show that people want to volunteer at a local level. Again, we are seeing this locally.
We have to ensure that the local focus is recognised by funders and policymakers at all levels. Big national schemes actually make things worse in many ways, so we need less involvement in expanding the volunteer schemes from RVS, and less Big Volunteering things, and more local support and support for local campaigns.
We have to be aware of the reasons that people don’t volunteer
A lot of the Time Well Spent survey looks at why volunteers might not continue or why non-volunteers don’t volunteer. We ignore these findings at our peril!