If you attended the Connecting Communities conference, you would have heard several speakers referencing two reports that have come out recently looking at volunteering trends. The first is the Community Life Survey which was made public earlier this year. The other was the NCVO Time Well Spent report, which was released on the 27th of June.

NCVO released some snippets of the report earlier in the year; however, the full report was launched along with some interesting findings. Below are just a few which sprung out to us.

Read the full report HERE.

• Volunteers did not increase in COVID, but it declined further, and we have not yet seen a bounce back.
• Groups are asking for too much from volunteers and risk losing them. Many volunteers feel pressured into giving more time than they would like.
• Motivations for volunteering have declined; however, wanting to help people is still one of the top reasons people get involved.
• Two main reasons people don’t want to give time to volunteering are; a lack of interest in ongoing commitment and wanting to do ‘other things with their spare time.’
• People need expenses paid, and while they may not ask, it needs to be offered regularly as it is a barrier in a ‘cost of living crisis
• More young people want to get involved, but with a cause which means something to them, and on a short-term basis.

The Support Cambridgeshire team will take these findings along with those of the Community Life Survey and look at training and support for groups in the coming year. If you need any support or advice around volunteer recruitment or retention, please feel free to get in contact at info@supportcambridgeshire.org.uk . If you would like to see training in a particular topic area, get involved, and we are always interested to hear from groups.