Please could someone talk to me about charities..I’ve been trying to volunteer for ages!

[Katy001]

Since before Covid, I’ve been trying to get involved with helping women’s charities or children’s charities.

I’ve spoken to a few charities but I almost feel like a bit of a hindrance. One lady was really nice and said she may have something for me to do, then I never heard from her again. Then last week I took some donations to a children’s charity and the lady was also really nice and said they’d be in touch as they needed some help wrapping Christmas presents. When I followed up, she didn’t reply. I follow her on social media and she’s always on it, but I don’t want to keep bugging her.

My job is in corporate PR, where the expectation is that emails are replied to instantly, things are generally followed up on within the day etc. So, this is a really different way of communicating (or not communicating !)

I don’t want to hassle people as I know Covid must have turned everything on it’s head. It’s not what I’m used to though and it feels a bit strange. Is it normal in the charity sector? Is it best just to back off?

COVID is a really bad time for volunteering because of lockdown so many services have had to be scaled back.

What i would say though is that volunteering is no longer as simple as just saying that you want to be a volunteer. In most cases volunteering is the same as applying for a job, with application forms and the need for references etc. I’m guessing it’s predominantly to discourage people who see volunteering as a way back into work, but it really isn’t that easy to get into volunteering any more.

Hi OP, I dont know if you are still reading but I didnt want to just scroll past. I'm a full time volunteer manager (and a volunteer myself!) I've worked in charities of all sizes and currently work for a medium sized regional charity. We have 350ish volunteers, around 1/3 of whom have been able to safely return to volunteering in some capacity since March. I have over 200 on my waitlist, all have recieved a personal acknowledgement (within a week) but they wont hear from me again until we have roles available. I've taken on a grand total of 3 new volunteers since March, all for very specific jobs. Theres just one of me. So in answer to your question, now is definately not a good time to be looking to volunteer.

More generally, thank you so much for wanting to volunteer, your time will be very much valued by someone! My advice would be to treat it like a job search, check what roles charities are actually advertising for. Look on their website, at the local volunteer centre and on local volunteer facebook pages. Take your application seriously, tell them what you can offer and be honest about your availability and what you hope to get from volunteering. If you want a responsible role then be prepared to interview and undergo any relevant checks. If you cant committ to more than 6 months, forget it, it's a waste of charity resources unless you're doing a very specific project (eg building a website). If you would prefer low-committment opportunities or you are happy to just generally muck in then look at things like "the good gym" or microvolunteering. These are quick and easy ways to get involved. Small local charities often have more need for general help, but they may only have a couple of part time staff and a handful of dedicated trustees. So goodwill is in abundance, but they can be shockingly inefficient and you might find you are less supported as an individual.

Please remember that all charities exist to deliver a service. Volunteers are one of the resources we use to deliver that service. The job of a good volunteer manager is to piece together all the skills, ambitions, ideals and prejudices, personality quirks and clashes, random availability and "sorry I'm going to be late again"s, egos and passions, of a volunteer team... and still deliver a high quality profressional services. I want to bring the best out in my volunteers, and its important they have a fulfilling experience too - this starts with matching them to right role, and takes a lot of ongoing investment. I turn a lot people away because we dont have a role to make use of their skills or we cant fulfill their expectations. It's nothing personal, so please dont take it to heart, just keep looking out, the right volunteer role for you will come up and be well worth it when it does

I applied for a few things via Do-it, never heard back. Did do some volunteering through my local church but got mysteriously dropped from the rota after a few months. It was really upsetting.

I wouldn't bother anymore. It really annoys me that there are people wanting and willing to volunteer but there just doesn't seem to be the infrastructure to make use of everyone, and/or there's a lack of goodwill.

I have volunteered for two large organizations and both involved interviews, vetting and lengthy training and procedural processes. It certainly wasn't a matter of sending an email and starting the next day. I can highly recommend Banardos, they treat their volunteers really well and throughout COVID have kept in regular touch and several times a year i get a thank you card for my time.

Meant to say stick to proper organizations that do have a HR department. More often than enough volunteering in the local church can come with a lot of politics and as a pp said you are excluded from their rota for not being in the right clique.

@Katy001 apologies my reply to you came across as really snippy!

It's great that you want to volunteer.
I think @Volmanager 's advice is spot on.

Good luck hope you find something soon

Maybe look on Facebook for community things to do. ATM everything is up in the air and charities are trying to get through covid like us all they are WFH they can't run training courses etc etc I think if you are impatient then maybe volunteering isn't for you .

My reply looks snippy that wasn't my intention.

Thank you all so much especially @Volmanager. Your response was so interesting and certainly gave me a different perspective. 200 people on your waitlist!! You sound like a fab manager.
I have lots to think about and look at, so thank you

I'm a trustee and volunteer for a charitable organisation. This last six months has been insane, We've had to change almost everything about how we operate, as we're a face to face support organisation, and we're no longer allowed into the main institution whose residents we support.

Our staff have been absolutely stressed and overworked to the max, trying to change everything and offer things that would normally be completely outside our remit, to people we wouldn't normally help.

I'm afraid that if anyone contacted the office now asking to volunteer, we'd be very slow to respond. We can't offer much to anyone who isn't experienced in what we do, because everything's up and down and sideways, and we can't do the usual training.

I do hope that our admin would at least send you a placeholding email though, and thank you for offering your help.

I have found myself running a food bank since March. 80-odd current volunteers, lots of interest from new volunteers. I (sadly) expect that I have left people in your position more than once:

• See an enquiry come in from someone who looks great but get swamped by [urgent thing] and by the time the urgency has passed it's several weeks later / I assume you've lost interest / I've forgotten.
• Have a good idea of where to place them in the org but explaining what I want would take so long that I just do it myself (I hate this, but it happens).
• Someone makes an enquiry about volunteering but asks sensible questions in their email that would take a long time to reply and I keep meaning to / inane questions / something that makes them seem like hard work from the off ("I'd love to volunteer but I hope there are no men in the building because I find that stressful, and I do hope your team are qualified because in my last role...").
• Utterly inundated with enquiries and want to give current volunteers a fair crack at shifts, so can't welcome newcomers.
• The things I actually need help with are high-level, boring as fuck or business-critical, so I'm stuck doing them myself.

But if you fancy doing social media management for a food bank in south London, you know where to find me

I work in the charity sector. I'm a project manager but I manage volunteers alongside my day job after we lost our volunteer manager when the funding stopped.

I know you mean well but as others upthread have said, there is a big difference in resources between the charity sector and private businesses which is skewing your expectations. It sounds as if you really have no idea about the realities of our situations!!!

Volunteers are not a free resource. They need to be interviewed, trained, heavily supported. All that work falling on the shoulders of staff already on their knees.

When we get a request from a volunteer to join our organisation, I will sent the message around to the other staff, hoping that a staff member who has time on her hands can take the volunteer under her wing. All this is done as a favour to the volunteer rather than helping the organisation per se. To be totally honest, it is easier to do the roles ourselves rather than to train someone random to do the job, but we take volunteers because this is something that funders like to see.

Sorry to be so blunt. As someone else said, would you consider a trustee role? It might be better to apply via a trustee advert. Please note that the same info applies to trustee roles - the team are so busy that you may not hear for a while, or you may have to chase, and it takes a while to be fully inducted into the organisation.

To be totally honest, it is easier to do the roles ourselves rather than to train someone random to do the job

This is a good point.
It's a bit like when your dc comes aged 3yo and wants to "help" you make a cake.
Now you know you can do it in 10 minutes with minimal mess. If you let the 3yo help, it will take 20 plus you have more tidying up to do.
But in the future they may get to the point of making the cake themselves and saving you a job.

So when your 3yo offers to "help" you, you have to choose between getting it done quickly and potentially the future when they may be able to do it without help. Although of course they may decide it's boring and never get to that point.

Sometimes you just don't have time to let the 3yo help.

In the same way, when you have a volunteer you do have to make a decision. Not just on can they do the job, are they trustworthy etc.

But also: Do I (or someone else) currently have time to train this person so they can do it by themselves?
Will they leave before they are any use?
Also if they are trained, is there space for them to do the job?

Which is why I talked about trustee work. I work as a finance director so my skills are best placed as a board trustee and treasurer.

We also have professional marketers on our board.

The right trustee adds to the charity rather than being a drag.