What volunteering is and how it is changing

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What is volunteering?

Volunteering takes many different forms. The Vision for Volunteering is relevant to all of them.

Whatever form it takes, volunteering is an active, deliberate pursuit. Each volunteer chooses an activity they want to do, motivated by the difference they want to make, and how this shapes the world they want to live in.

In this Vision, we consider that you are ‘volunteering’ if you are doing something:

which is designed to improve the world, a part of it, or community in it
which is your own free choice as an individual
without being paid.

A volunteer might not consider themselves to be a volunteer. Perhaps they think of themselves as ‘helping out’, ‘being neighbourly’, ‘taking part in my community or faith group’, ‘supporting a cause’, or undertaking ‘social action’ - or they use another term altogether.

Volunteering might be structured and organised through a group, club or charity. It may be more self-directed or spontaneous, like the plethora of mutual aid witnessed during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. It may be a regular activity, a one-off, or anything in-between.

Volunteering can involve anything from doing shopping for a neighbour, being a trustee or coaching a sports team, to acting with others to help tackle issues from climate change and racism to food and fuel poverty.

This diversity has often made ‘volunteering’ a tricky thing to define. Finding a precise definition is not our aim. All forms of volunteering are valid. All are valuable. And all are relevant to this Vision.

Why volunteering matters

Volunteering benefits the individuals involved, as well as wider society, nature, the climate and more. It builds our health, wellbeing, connection to others and wider purpose.

Volunteers often develop skills, knowledge and experience that can be useful in paid employment and other environments.

Volunteering builds new connections, as well as fresh perspectives and insights.

Volunteers help to transform communities - whether it is a local community, religious or cultural community, or a community of those with shared interests, as people get to know each other and work together on things they care about, driving positive change and improving others’ quality of life.

From health and social care to libraries and the police force, volunteers play an invaluable role in ensuring services are high quality, person-centred and effective. In times of local and national crisis volunteers give vital extra help to government-led responses.

Seven in ten UK adults have volunteered at least once in their life [1]. Survey after survey reveal a nuanced, magical chemistry of personal drives and social objectives - volunteering as a versatile medium through which to do incredible things, as well as an end in itself.

Photo of a man coaching a boy to play tennis

How volunteering is changing

A look back into the recent history of volunteering in this country reveals several ‘breakthrough moments’ - 2005’s Year of the Volunteer, London 2012 and most recently, the Covid era. All such moments tell us something about the nature of volunteering in this country, offering real opportunity for reflection and change. It is within this spirit that the Vision for Volunteering was conceived.

But of course not all ‘moments’ are the same; the Year of the Volunteer and London 2012 were celebratory occasions, fuelled by the temporary phenomena of national campaigns and major events. Both were followed by spikes in the numbers of those volunteering, which over time fell back to something more like their pre-moment levels. Growing volunteering through planned interventions has proved possible, if perhaps not sustainable.

The Covid era is clearly a different kind of phenomena - it hasn’t yet led to observable net growth and appears unlikely to do so. However the numbers of those volunteering for the first time was significant [2] - 4.6m new volunteers puts a major dent in the cohort of 3 in 10 UK adults who had never previously participated. [3]

And we can also celebrate the tremendous agility of volunteers, as many pivoted in their roles and practices to urgently address new needs. The speed at which the community response mobilised and the unity found in its relentless focus on a collective, national cause were also an immense credit to the nation’s faculties of compassion and resilience.

But we also know that a large number of volunteers, mainly in formal roles, withdrew for health reasons or because their activity was not compatible with social distancing. It is therefore all the more remarkable that the estimated 12.4m regular volunteers active in 2020-21 was comparable to the years immediately prior to Covid [4]. Sustaining national levels of volunteering in the midst of a pandemic should be viewed as a considerable success.

Building on the Covid era

But as numbers alone only tell us so much, let us turn instead to the changes in the nature of volunteering that the Covid era seemed to accelerate. The pandemic prompted further growth in informal volunteering, leading to an evolution in volunteers’ expectations; as well as increased use of digital tools in the way key community response roles were brokered, managed and delivered.

And so given these changes, we must now ask ourselves what volunteers really need now, and during the next 10 years, in order to be able to make their most effective contributions?

We might begin by putting this question in a bigger context - has Covid sharpened our ambitions for the role volunteering plays, for individuals, and for the society in which they participate?

If Covid does represent a breakthrough moment then perhaps it is better-described in terms of this impact on public consciousness - not only for those first-time volunteers, but for the many others across society who witnessed and recognised the essential role volunteering played in alleviating suffering and keeping communities together.

In this context, this Vision invites us to look at volunteering from all angles - to consider how we build on the best of a challenging era, whether we choose to let go of those practices that no longer serve us and whether we now have the drive to tackle some of volunteering’s most long-standing inequalities.

Whatever its nature, the breakthrough evident during the Covid era is an important one - certainly more significant than can be described by numbers alone. A new energy is emerging in volunteering. The question posed by this Vision is simply: what will we do with it?

Context matters

Volunteering does not exist in a vacuum. If it is best understood as a unique medium through which to do some amazing things then context, and the operating environment, is very important as we consider those changes.

In 2018, the landmark Civil Society Futures inquiry identified seven major forces - some personal or local, others national or global - influencing the outlook for civil society. Within these are many cross-cutting factors pertinent to volunteering: the rise in loneliness and the mental health crisis; the changing expectations of young people; an ageing population; increasing retirement ages; growing income and wealth inequalities; a decline in public trust and the retreat of the state - among many others.

These trends underscore an urgent need to bring people together, in order to help each other and create resilience. Volunteering in this context becomes more than simply a versatile medium for delivering social objectives, but a space within which civil society reinvents how it operates, distributes its power and practices meaningful inclusivity.

The individual and the collective

As Civil Society Futures also noted, we live in an era where the needs of the individual and the collective are often perceived as in conflict. Concentrations in power, growing geographic inequalities and the rise of online engagement appear to exacerbate this tension.

Volunteering shows us an unusual side of this problem if we consider that its full ‘social’ value is often felt in multiple spheres simultaneously - certainly for the individual (the volunteer and, where applicable, the beneficiary they support) but also the collective (for society and, where applicable, the organisation hosting the volunteer).

Unhelpfully, those leading and organising volunteering efforts are often forced to choose one or the other in justifying its purpose. Attempts to capture, attribute or measure this value - in monetary terms or otherwise - can feel confusing, incomplete or unsatisfying.

In order to transcend these tensions, the Vision for Volunteering makes a conscious choice to embrace volunteers as our starting point. Putting them at the heart of the Vision not only reflects the main thrust of the feedback we heard in our consultation phase, but also presents the best chance of meeting the needs of the collective, by focusing on how we can best enable the volunteer’s most effective contribution.

We therefore seek a strengths-based Vision rooted in what volunteers want and need, one based around their capacities and motivations. Given the journey volunteering has been on, from 2005 to Covid, we believe this now represents the best chance of unlocking and sustaining the diverse strengths of voluntary activity up to and beyond our 2032 horizon.

Resolving this tension

This should not sound like a radical idea. In fact, it echoes much of what is already considered good practice in volunteering (in valuing lived experience) and effective service creation more broadly (by embracing human-led design and co-production principles).

To some, this approach may appear to dilute society’s need at the expense of the volunteer’s. We see that as a red herring. Consider how intense or messy co-production often feels at the beginning, and yet the process usually leads practitioners to the best solution at the first attempt - one that’s both fit for purpose and sustainable, because it is grounded in the needs of the individuals actually using it.

We would go further and suggest that Covid has already shown us - in very real terms - that the motivations and expectations of the individual and collective need not be in conflict. Consider how, at a time when our community needs were rarely more pressing, a huge rise in informal models saw volunteers step up effectively in ways they designed themselves, at times that suited them and at levels of frequency that fitted into their lives.

Innovations in both technology and local partnership working enabled this dynamic to succeed and this tension to dissolve - and our skilled leaders in volunteering evolved their practice at pace to accommodate it.

As a case study, this example provides one illustration of how we consider our central question - what do volunteers really need in order to enable their most effective contributions? Considerations around the future of volunteering infrastructure could do worse than use this as their jumping off point.

Three horizons, one Vision

There is much to unpack here. We invite you to share in the approach we’ve taken in processing the findings of our workshop engagement and your submissions - a model encapsulating ‘three horizons’.

Horizon 1 represents business as usual - what we’ve always done and what’s always happened. In moments of change, these factors come under pressure. Our task here is to identify what is dying and how we help it to leave on good terms - as well as what we want to retain and reinvent.

Horizon 2 represents disruptive innovation - new factors breaking through and challenging the status quo. Moments of change usher these in. Some last, some serve a disruptive purpose and then die away. Our task is to figure out how to harness rather than control these forces, putting them to work in the service of a future we all want to see.

And Horizon 3 represents the emerging future. Here we look at what is coming - what is being born, and what it needs to arrive well and fulfil its purpose.

You may like to consider your own experiences here - which trends would you place on which horizon? Which of what we’ve discussed above are the most significant, and what’s missing?

The graphic below is an early illustration, rather than a fixed certainty. In looking forwards into volunteering’s future, the Vision invites everyone with a stake in volunteering to consider the roles we can play along these horizons. They challenge us to understand that change is always inevitable, and so ultimately our only choice is whether to be its agent or its victim.

Graphic showing three horizons — Horizon 1 - Business as Usual. For example: the idea of a ‘volunteer army’; the notion of a civic core’; ‘paint a fence’ CSR volunteering.
Horizon 2 - Disruptive Innovation. For example: Covid-19 local mobilisation partnerships; digital technology’s role in brokerage; growth in informal volunteering.
Horizon 3 - Emerging Futures. For example: decentralised power; people-driven activism; open data.

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