The cost-of-living crisis is affecting every element of charity operations, and volunteering is no exception. Melissa Moody explores how charities are dealing with the latest shortage of willing volunteers by bringing community into the heart of their work.
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The 2020s have not, so far, been very kind to charities. They started with a pandemic and now the cost-of-living is impacting organisations across the country. From small to large organisations and from those with minimal volunteers to those that need a veritable army – they are all affected.

According to Reach Volunteering, in 2019 the organisation had 1,316 volunteers signed up. That jumped to 2,467 during the pandemic in 2020, dipping to 1,813 in 2021. But in 2022 it went up again to 2,681. Although just a snapshot, it gives an idea of a wider picture within the sector.

That doesn’t mean, however, that charities are flush with volunteers. Gemma Smith, coordinator of volunteers at Age UK Bexley has been struggling to find volunteers for its befriending programme, struggling particularly in the last few months. “It’s probably been within the last six months when people stopped working from home… where people have gone back into the office a lot of grandparents and older people have been doing more childcare so they’ve got less time to themselves to give.”

For some, the pandemic caused a massive drop in numbers, which have yet to recover. Laura Cottey, chief commissioner of Girlguiding South West England had a drop of about 4,000 volunteers and there’s been a lag in getting the numbers back up, with them currently sitting at around 12,000. This means there’s a waiting list for some groups and they’re unable to keep up with the demand.

In 2021, Cottey realised that focus needed to be on trying to retain current volunteers, and find innovative ways of recruiting new ones. This process has included supporting and recognising volunteers’ contributions. During the pandemic, Girlguiding brought in the Girlguiding Hero Award, which is given to volunteers alongside service and other awards. They also hired two new volunteer recruitment officers working in the larger areas within the region.

Volunteer welcome grants, which can be used for either the cost of the volunteer’s subscription, training or for uniform or a combination, have been a further, and welcome addition. “There were two reasons for bringing in the grants, one was to help units that were struggling financially but the other was to ensure we could provide a much more flexible way of working,” adds Cottey. “With teens and students, key workers, people with young families that just can’t commit to regular volunteering [the welcome grant] is a good way to support them.”

Adapt and survive

It’s evident that innovation in volunteering is needed – and fast. Job sharing and pooling resources have become more common (particularly as a way of cutting costs) and there’s no reason this can’t be used for volunteering too, as Ramblers found when partnering with the British Horse Society for training. “By pooling resources, identifying shared needs and training resources or sharing volunteer time or sites, it’s one thing that’s worked well for us because we’ve been able to train perhaps double the people,” says Heather Clatworthy, paths manager for Ramblers.

But tried and tested solutions can work wonders too. Just because the pandemic is seemingly in the past, it doesn’t mean some of the solutions can’t still be used. Along with hybrid working practices for staff, many charities have created options for their volunteers too. Cottey explains that Girlguiding has been running online conferences and workshops as a way of delivering support and training “in a different way”.

Similarly, Ramblers has moved a lot of its training online, and have found the value of engaging with people in different ways. “We’re doing a lot of work in developing our training and guidance and I think the key thing that we’ve identified is having a variety of ways of engaging with people,” says Josie Mizen, who is a don’t lose your way officer at Ramblers.

Adaption seems to be a key value for charities that are successfully finding volunteers. With the changes in recruitment practices, Girlguiding South West England noticed a change. “We’ve noticed a huge spike in the number of volunteer inquiries… and about 100 to 200 a month are under 18, which is really interesting,” Cottey says. “I do wonder if it is as a result of the pandemic. Young people saw that perhaps their parents or relatives or older siblings were really engaged with community action and the community spirit that came as a result of the pandemic, so I think they then wanted to become involved themselves.”

“People might not be able to give their money, but they can give their time,” points out the Ramblers’ Mizen.

Research is supporting that same idea. Pro Bono Economics is estimating that an extra 2.5 million people aged between 18 and 34 will give their time for charities in 2023. This compares to only 6% of people over 55 who are not currently volunteering planning to give up their time this year.

Others are finding out the necessity of change too. By doing her research, Anna Rojek, learning and development manager at Citizens Advice, Stockport, knew that a change in demographics would be essential. “We knew from the trends and from what other organisations are saying, that it’s extremely difficult to recruit volunteers,” she explains, which is when the organisation realised they needed a big recruitment drive. “But client profile was changing as well. People were coming to us with more complex, more serious issues.

“Bearing this in mind started to revamp our volunteer offer… I had three goals. First of all was diversifying our volunteers. Prepandemic we mainly had elderly, white, British volunteers but we wanted to change this.” The second was to improve retention, which was sitting at 50%. “If it’s so difficult to recruit volunteers we needed to do something to increase the retention rate otherwise we’ll be recruiting all the time.” The third goal was to increase employability, because they were also struggling to recruit for paid staff roles.

In an aim to increase applications, they scrapped the forms and stopped asking people for CVs. “We started recruiting people for their attitude and then training them on skills.” Rojek made sure they had excellent customer service, empathy and were good with clients. Other changes included streamlining induction so it would take weeks instead of months and giving employees access to the internal office.

And it worked. In two months they received over 200 expressions of interest. In fact, it also helped with their staff recruitment problem. All volunteers had a guaranteed interview if they applied for a paid position – of which now eight volunteers have transitioned into staff with their volunteer retention rate rocketing to 90%. “It’s the best we’ve ever seen.”

Flexibility in roles also seems key. Age UK Bexley’s Smith explains that volunteering every week can seem like a big commitment to some people. “I like to say to people that any time you can give will be really useful. We know that people have other things going on, but you can just communicate with us and we can work around that.”

“And we’re finding less people want to go into people’s homes or less people want to work alone… and also I had a gentleman who said he likes the idea of volunteering but he said I have enough of my own problems without taking on other people’s. That’s a fair point, I thought, people have been through so much,” Smith adds.

The community focus

When speaking to charities who have had success in recruiting volunteers, many have one thing in common – an approach that centred around the community. “I think it’s really important that there’s local engagement with your communities or through social media. People want to be able to sign up for volunteering and then be able to become engaged within that local area quite quicky,” notes Girlguiding’s Cottey.

“We [Age UK Bexley] have had stalls at local Morrision’s and Asda’s where we’ve given out leaflets and information. We’ve gone to local churches to put adverts out, and we’ve got a very strong Facebook and Instagram presence – we’re trying to reach people of all ages,” explains Smith. But it isn’t always that easy, as the charity has found. “We like to talk to people. If you can get involved in a conversation with someone you can tell them a bit more about the role… and people say they want the application form but they just don’t send it back.”

Citizens Advice’s Rojek was keen to have volunteers from local communities “because they understand the issues from those local communities the best. They know what pressing issues those communities have.” The Ramblers’ Clatworthy meanwhile emphasises the need to really showcase the diversity of roles available “whether it’s a little bit of time, it’s a good way for people to get their foot in the door and try… make the appeal local and relevant” particularly for those working in national charities.

It helps when the local volunteers are engaged too, adds Mizen. “We’ve got existing volunteers in certain parts of the country who have been really active and really dedicated on [the paths project]. They recruit from within their local area,” taking the initiative to do talks in local community groups or history societies.

The most success they’ve had, she adds, is when a person or a small team of individuals are passionate and essentially self-organise. “We can provide knowledge, we can provide the training, framework and support and guidance they need but they will have that local knowledge.”

“It’s a really nice way of reaching local people who have that knowledge who maybe haven’t previously come across this… It’s one thing for us to go into a village from London and say ‘this is a project we’re running and you should get involved’ but when we have local people on the ground who can talk about their own experiences volunteering it’s definitely a powerful way of engaging with people.”

Signs of hope

There is no one size fits all for volunteer recruitment, but it seems a combination of measures can help. Girlguiding Southwest has seen conversion rates of enquiries to volunteers increase from 20% during the pandemic up to 60% currently, with hopes of further rises.

And the numbers at Age UK Bexley “are low but they’re not nonexistent”, Smith explains. Last quarter they had 14 enquiries and recruited four. “But looking back it was never a huge amount.” The charity is finding new methods of recruitment, targeting people at jobs fairs and the unemployed, suggesting that if they volunteer for six months then they can get a reference towards a full-time job.

They are also happy to share their successes with others. “We’ve got more volunteers than we have places, and I’m thinking we can share with other local Citizens Advice,” adds Rojek. “The people are great, they’ve got great skills and attitude.”

There’s hope that country-wide initiatives will help too. As part of the Coronation celebrations, a national day of volunteering has been planned. Created by some of Britain’s best known charities from the Scouts to the Royal Voluntary Service, Girlguiding to the National Trust, it will take place on Monday May 8 – the Bank Holiday of the Coronation long weekend.

The aim of The Big Help Out is to use volunteering to bring communities together and create a lasting volunteering legacy from the Coronation Weekend. Charities of any size can get involved and it’s hoped that it can help recruit volunteers for more than the one day.

Matt Hyde, CEO of Scouts, who helped originate the idea said: “What we’re trying to do is promote the range of volunteering opportunities from small charities to larger charities. Local, national, physical or virtual, online or over the phone. For people to give however much time they give on causes they’re passionate about.”

“It’s incredibly exciting for something that started out as a little idea I had discussed with a couple of people. We were thinking about this before but the coronation just gives a good vehicle to get the public’s attention and capture the imagination, get people excited about volunteering.”

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