Volunteering

[rattymol]

The number of people volunteering has really fallen. I am interested in why. So
Yalu = I don't volunteer and won't
Yanbu = I do volunteer or would

Interested as well to know why people volunteer or don't volunteer.

I’m a volunteer but I haven’t actually volunteered for about 2 years. DH is a volunteer too and he has visited our place of volunteer but we have a 18m old and one of us needs to watch them. We could swap the volunteering and caring for DC but my uniform doesn’t fit me and I can’t afford to buy a new one so DH is currently do the volunteering. Organising volunteering around childcare and work means we can only do ad-hoc volunteering at the minute. Many people just don’t have the time.

Volunteers have usually been retired people. Since covid some people in that age group stopped volunteering because of covid and being at risk. Some of them haven’t picked that up since due to declining health, being more tired or not ready to interact on the level they were before. The volunteers that are working are having to stop volunteering to work extra jobs or pick up extra hours.

I see a lot of volunteer roles that I believe should be paid or take away from paid opportunities. National trust for example will have a number of paid staff in their visitor centres and then have a number of volunteers also working scanning people in, these to me aren’t supplementary roles that improve visitor experience, but necessary jobs for the place to run- often the (usually older) people who do them grumble about the lack of paid roles for their grandchildren- for me by offering up free labour they are squeezing out the minimum wage jobs.

in the same way I see charity shops with one or two paid members of staff and then volunteers, or events near me asking for volunteer stewards- often I feel that these jobs should be paid- but use people who are desperate for work experience or to put stuff on their CVs. The kind of people who are worst placed to donate their time for free, for me a lot of it feels like it takes advantage.

If it is the nice jobs or opportunities that is different, but I don’t feel it is. An animal sanctuary near me for example likes volunteers to run their shop but if you want a role actually with the cats you can’t do it.

Maybe people have increased work hours so no longer have time?

Or they have changed lifestyles and can no longer make it work for them

I don't believe 'volunteering' came without some form of cost to the volunteer

I stopped volunteering in a charity shop because:

• I did not enjoy it: I was given boring, repetitive tasks and stuck in a small backroom and I was asked to lift heavy loads (after I had made it clear at interview that was the one thing I could not do)...
• I felt that I was used to do a job that the charity should be hiring a paid staff member to do
• with the cost of living crisis if I am doing the equivalent of an actual job then I need to be paid for it
• I disagreed with some of the charity head office recent activities (they put out some ludicrous, jargon/woke vocabulary that even I as a ''woke lefty'' could not support).

I still do one-off bits of volunteering (I just painted signage for a public event for example) but no longer volunteer regularly.

I also work for a charity and most of them make the same mistake: they just see volunteers a a way to plug capacity gaps and avoid hiring paid staff and fail to give a good volunteering experience.

I think volunteering is important and have done lots in the past, I think it's important to be involved in your local community.

I don't at the moment because I just don't have the energy.

However I've also found the opportunities I see are becoming increasingly unrealistic in their ask / for instance wanting someone to commit to a year at two days a week. I understand they want consistency and commitment but that just cuts out a lot of people like me who work full time.

DH and I do quite a bit.

However it actually can cost us money to volunteer. Travel, food, equipment etc. We can't always afford it.

Once a week, after I've finished my desk job, I do the window display in a charity shop. I do it because I enjoy it.

You might find the NCVO reports helpful eg https://www.ncvo.org.uk/news-and-insights/news-index/key-findings-from-time-well-spent-2023/#/

I don't volunteer because I see too many people having the piss taken out of them re. time and expectations.

Thought so! Have heard this too

I have volunteered many times throughout my life. The older I get the less willing I become. Ime, despite volunteers functioning as an integral cornerstone of our society, we are undervalued. I have seen whole business plans based on utilising volunteers - it's simply not sustainable. Plus, with COL crisis it's become a luxury as time is spent actually earning money instead of volunteering.

I would volunteer if I could, but I’m too unreliable.

I will when kids have left home/I retire but atm I have no time or energy left to give.

I volunteer a lot as it enhances my life and fits in well.

Im a parent helper at Beavers as I need to be there for my son anyway. I’m an Independent Visitor because it’s something I care about and it is fun. I mentor newly adoptive parents because it’s something I needed. I help at an animal sanctuary because my son gets a lot out of doing it, so we do it together.

Plus, with COL crisis it's become a luxury as time is spent actually earning money instead of volunteering.

All my time is earning money, or recovering, or being unwell or life stuff like children, cleaning and laundry. I just don’t have extra capacity to volunteer. Wish I did though.

I recently gave up volunteering for schools as they became so flaky - wanting x,y,z and then when the time came didn't need it any more , had planned something else

10 years ago this never happened

I work for a charity for older people and the numbers of volunteers we have has fallen a lot which has really impacted the services we can offer. I think one of the issues is that a lot of the volunteers were elderly anyway and can't carry on, there are good numbers of paid job vacancies so people don't need to do volunteering. I can't do it myself as I work full time and totally exhausted by the weekend but will help with the odd charity event linked to the charity I work for.

I think it's because of the ask of volunteers is rightly bigger these days
I volunteer in an animal rescue type environment

Historically volunteers will just wander in and out, and people somewhat expect to do that still. We frequently turn away half hearted volunteer attempts and people get really angry about it

For example people don't want to commit to regular days (which is understandable in a climate inwhich people work) but we need that in order to invest in training someone up. It's incredibly hard if we have no idea how many people might volunteer in a given week, we can't then figure out staffing, many places might need dbs, you to do mandatory training eg safeguarding. We can't invest that in someone that maybe comes once a month, maybe.

The people with the most time these days are kids, which just aren't appropriate in a lot of roles.

Lots of people expect that their 14 year old can come to a kennel on a random Tuesday and walk dogs. Most of our dogs aren't appropriate for a 14 year old even if the insurance wasn't insane

We've had people turn up to volunteer with no prior arrangement and bringing their kids with them.

Theres also a better understanding these days that sometimes paid staff, or consistent staff are better. For example people might randomly volunteer to teach in Africa, but now it's better understood that its disruptive to kids learning to have untrained people who possibly don't speak the language come for a week and it would be more effective to pay an actual teacher rather than someone fundraising to fly themselves out. Gone are the days where you could wander into an orphanage to volunteer like that

In my side of things (wildlife) there is a lot of skill involved and frankly people have to invest a lot of time to get there. For example hand rearing birds, the syringe feeding is hard and delicate, you can't speak to them etc. So most of our volunteers that are only coming once a month end up doing unskilled work, that frankly is less rewarding.
People tend to want to spend time with the animals, but really it's stuff like cleaning out, admin and washing up that need doing, but people don't want to do that.

My mum used to volunteer with wildlife, and she was allowed with no training to take stuff home to handrear in a completely inappropriate environment. She also wasn't working at the time, so she volunteered at a school with no dbs etc

I think you need to recognise there is a cost to volunteering for some, travel costs and food. I had an ex member of staff retire who would have continued if we paid her petrol (very specialist knowledge) and my bosses said no. False economy.

I find a lot of volunteers don’t want to be staff, they don’t want to be pressured to be there at certain times and do certain jobs. They often are there to socialise as well. Sticking them as a FOH job on their own doesn’t do that. Also if the sun is shining then they want to go somewhere else or if it’s raining stay indoors. They don’t want all the boring jobs.

A local museum tried to staff with volunteers and then treat them like staff, giving them set shifts and criticising them if they were off sick. It failed .

I had a volunteer quit because she was told off for chatting to another volunteer and was upset about it. It was department policy to have volunteers but so many managers then treated them as paid staff and didn’t understand why it didn’t work.

I am a volunteer with a Good Neighbour project.

It takes an hour or so a week to visit a housebound person in their home. I have become quite good friends with the person I visit. He is not much older than me. We have a natter, he makes a cup of tea, I take some cake. Makes a huge difference to someone who has no family and only one close friend.

I used to do a lot then stopped during the pandemic and never got back into it. Having said that, I did register online this winter to help out in warm hubs/food banks but no one contacted me, even though I already have dbs reg.

I do, but not on a strict rota, I volunteer at our local foodbank (which is also a soup kitchen and friendship centre for those who are isolated), we also do things line help apply for benefits, man and a van to move furniture etc.

I also volunteer with khalsa aid, while most things are abroad, we also support communities in the UK. Sometimes this is simple things such as providing food and drink, this may be to care homes, the homeless, or sometimes people at events, so things like the viewing of the queens coffin, people camping out for the coronation etc.

would love too but they all want at least 2 references and I just do not have them

I volunteer for three different organisations and work full time as well.

I volunteer with parkrun. I do it because I enjoy volunteering at it and because I enjoy running it - as it’s operated entirely by volunteers then I think it’s helpful for regular runners to volunteer every now and again. And that suits me too, as it’s not a regular commitment - I can sign up as and when to volunteer and mix it with running. As everyone’s in it together there’s no issue with being ‘treated like staff’ it’s a great example of volunteering in action!