My surprise at being the main sponsor for Volunteers’ Week

So this happened…

I did not start out the week thinking my not-for-profit social enterprise Works4U would be the main sponsor of Volunteers’ Week. It was not even on my radar.

However, a short break from work to make a nice cup of tea and I had an idea. That idea led to me sending an immediate email. That email led to other emails, then a meeting and then it was confirmed, Works4U would be the main sponsor of Volunteers’ Week. I could not be more proud and happy.

Launched in 1984, Volunteers’ Week has become the UK’s biggest volunteering campaign and a veritable rock-solid institution within our voluntary and community sector. Its objective to celebrate and recognise volunteers directly aligns with Works4U’s mission to show the importance and value of volunteering in our society.

Founded in 2009 as a subsidiary of the Hammersmith & Fulham Volunteer Centre, not-for-profit Works4U is now an award-winning social enterprise which is taking a lead role in developing employee volunteering in the UK as well as carrying out ground-breaking and pioneering volunteering research that reframes how we look at volunteering in the UK.

Unfortunately, volunteering is undervalued and often seen as a “nice to have”, the icing on the cake of society, but if you look closely, it is actually a key ingredient of the cake itself. Our research and analysis from 2023 show that volunteering provides an annual equivalent monetary value of £326 billion to the UK. This is why Volunteers’ Week is so important.

My first experience of promoting Volunteers’ Week was in 2013 where my Volunteer Centre colleagues had a stall and gazebo set up in Hammersmith’s Lyric Square. I still have my Volunteers’ Week hat from that day! We had invited the Mayor of Hammersmith & Fulham and I officially opened Volunteers’ Week for the borough by shouting this at passers-by like a street market trader. We all then had a great day talking to people about local volunteering opportunities and encouraged many people to sign up.

Fast-forward 12 years and Works4U’s work and impact has grown so much. In March 2025 we published the London Vision for Volunteering report, a London-wide collaborative programme, which has 36 practical and strategic recommendations that act as a blueprint for developing volunteering. As part of the research for this work, we collected evidence that many Londoners started volunteering due to the Volunteers’ Week campaign.

Volunteers’ Week is such an important and collaborative campaign that brings us all together, individuals, communities, organisations and businesses to celebrate volunteers across the UK and Works4U is honoured to play a small part in making that happen.