Environmental charities need to deploy a 100,000 strong army of ‘skilled climate volunteers’ to step up their work in the UK, research has concluded.

The volunteers are needed to offer professional support in the running of the charities as well as frontline work such as tree planting.

The figures are based on a survey of 300 green charities in the UK, which found almost two thirds are actively looking for support from skilled volunteers.

The most common support needed, cited by more than four in five green charities, is with their marketing and fundraising, three quarters need support in evaluation work and around two thirds need help in their strategic planning and information systems.

This organisational skills gap is greatest for small charities, with half having no business plan for the year and a third having no way to measure their impact.

The survey has been carried out by organisational support charity Pilotlight, which said volunteers are needed to “use their unique professional expertise to help charities access the specialist skills they need but do not necessarily have the budget for”.

Skilled support is also needed to plant trees. While this is often considered unskilled work, it “can do more harm than good, leading to monocultures and disrupting natural ecosystems, if not done with care and expertise”, said Pilotlight

It added that remote working has “opened the door for virtual volunteering” opportunities, citing NCVO published evidence from earlier this year that three in ten volunteers are giving up their time online or over the phone.

Lack of diversity

Meanwhile seven in ten require help from professionally skilled volunteers with their efforts to improve diversity, equity and inclusion, with the Pilotlight highlighting “a growing body of research and debate around the white, eurocentric nature of the sustainability field”.

Figures released last year found that only 4.8% of environmental sector professionals are global majority employees compared to 12.6% of the working population.

One survey respondent said: “The environmental sector is still one of the least diverse sectors in the UK.”

Pilotlight points out that this lack of diversity among staff contrasts with figures showing those who volunteer with the support of their employer are twice as likely to be people of the global majority as the population at large.

Pro-bono programme

Pilotlight has set up a pro bono programme calling on employers to support their staff to volunteer, saying that businesses can also learn from green charities.

Among environmental charities surveyed seven in ten highlighted engagement and outreach work as a key skill of their current team as. Two in five said they can offer skills around leadership.

“This is a simple and compelling idea, that businesses like ours who want to take action on climate change can enable staff to flex their workplace skills in order to help environmental charities and social enterprises,” said Matt Sparkes, sustainability director of Linklaters LLP, which is among firms backing Pilotlight’s call.

“We can all learn and benefit from skilled volunteering of this kind.”

It is estimated there are around 16,000 environmental charities and social enterprises in the UK.

“Charities are a catalyst for action and are full of innovations for turning climate ambitions into reality,” said Pilotlight chief executive Ed Mayo.

“But as our research shows, they lack the capacity, skills and resources to do so.

“We have found there is a clear appetite and call for skilled climate volunteers to close the skills gap.”

Share Story: