Dominic Pinkney's World of Volunteering

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UK Employee Volunteering 2022-23 Report

I am very proud to be launching today the UK Employee Volunteering 2022-23 Report produced by non-for-profit social enterprise Works4U, a specialist in employee volunteering.

It provides genuinely new analysis and revealing insights into employee volunteering from the perspective of employees. Despite corporate volunteering being carried out for decades there is little analysis and data, let alone behind the scenes experiences of how it happens. Until now!

The report (free to download on Works4U’s website) reveals, for example:

25% did not know how much time their employer allowed
94% stated employers should do more to promote volunteering

However, the report also shows that employers are doing much more to organise employee volunteering but they are not keeping up with the demand from their employees.

There has been a perception shift by employees who in the past may have seen the opportunity to volunteer during work as something special and a nice to have, now see it as a business as usual activity and that it is odd or wrong if an employer does not offer it.

Employer Supported Volunteering (ESV), as it is referred to in the voluntary and community sector (VCS), has nowhere near reached its potential and the increase levels in employee volunteering is a positive trend but work needs to be carried out within the VCS to build capacity and skills to harness this. Works4U is trying to achieve this through the national ESV Network it has set up and manages.

The evidence of the report also shows that employers need to promote their employee volunteering programmes more effectively as otherwise they are not reaping the many business benefits of having one. As well as being an effective mechanism to support employee wellbeing and employee engagement, it helps with talent acquisition, talent recruitment and demonstrates to clients, partners, stakeholders, investors, supply chain that your business takes ESG, CSR, social impact and social responsibility very seriously.

Finally, a huge and massive thank you to everyone who helped make this report happen, it is no small thing for a non-profit like Works4U who punches far above its weight. A big thank you to all those who took the time to complete the survey and to promote it to others. The biggest thank you goes to my talented colleague Martyna who designed the report, including some original illustrations.

The UK Employee Volunteering 2022-23 Report can be downloaded here, I hope you find it interesting.

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Is Volunteering Dying?

If this sounds like one of those deliberately provocative ‘clickbait’ headlines, then I’m sorry to have to say this is a real question being asked in the voluntary and community sector. Only this week I got an email from someone struggling to recruit volunteers for an event who told me, ‘volunteering is a dying trait’.

Without volunteers there is no voluntary sector.

This is, of course, the bleeding obvious. It is so obvious, it seems, that it is completely forgotten and taken for granted.

Volunteering is the lifeblood of the voluntary and community sector. From informal gifts of time through helping a neighbour or at a community event through to formal roles such as Trustees, volunteering is ESSENTIAL to the sector functioning.

If volunteering is dying, then the result is the sector is dying. If the sector is dying, then communities are weakened and unsupported increasing demand on public services that are either already at capacity or do not exist as that is what our sector does. Bottom line, if volunteering is dying then everyone should be worried.

All across the UK, towns, cities and rural areas are reporting significant drops in the levels of formal volunteering:

Volunteer Now published their findings on the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on volunteering in Northern Ireland in December 2022 stating, ‘The emphasis and frequency with which volunteer recruitment was raised by interviewees was concerning.’ They also report the negative impact this is having on the mental health of volunteer managers.
Volunteer Scotland has been carrying out some great research into volunteering and how the cost-of-living crisis has impacted Scotland’s volunteer involving organisations (VIOs). Their February 2023 report has some important analysis and I would direct readers to the Key Findings on page 12 of their report.
NCVO, the umbrella body for the voluntary and community sector in England, in December 2022 also reported a lot of its members are having issues and problems recruiting and retaining volunteers.
I co-chair the London Volunteer Centre Network and members across London are reporting issues around volunteer recruitment and retention. The Hammersmith & Fulham Volunteer Intelligence Report (Mar 2023) also highlights that the biggest issue affecting local VIOs is recruiting new volunteers.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of evidence, but hopefully enough to convince that there is a real decline in formal volunteering and that this is causing real problems for charities and the communities they serve.

The cost-of-living crisis is clearly a large contributing factor, but to think volunteering issues will disappear once that has passed is to misunderstand the situation.

Volunteering has serious structural and systemic issues which have been exacerbated by the cost-of-living crisis but will remain, or be worse, once the crisis over:

Trends for volunteers and VIOs moving in opposite directions – this has been happening for a few years and was accelerated by the pandemic. VIOs are increasingly more safeguarding conscious with long on-boarding processes to train and support volunteers to carry out their roles. As a result, they are naturally keen to have volunteers who will commit to giving significant amount of time over a long period. Whereas those interested in volunteering increasingly want to do it on their terms, when it is convenient for them, on an ad hoc basis and as soon as possible. Although VIOs are making some efforts for more flexible volunteer roles, they have a long way to go.
Post-pandemic volunteering is different. As well as the cost-of-living, there are many factors that have impacted volunteering, such as:
(i) Many older people who volunteered in-person have not returned to their volunteer roles;
(ii) Perception that the pandemic is over and so volunteers not needed so much;
(iii) Fatigue and burnout of volunteers who have already given so much of their time;
(iv) Desire to volunteer remotely and/or less inclination for in-person volunteering
Lack of funding to support volunteer programmes – to manage effective volunteer programmes that recruit and retain volunteers well you need good volunteer management resources. The economic squeeze of VIOs over the past 10 or more years has led to a reduction in these resources and, in many cases, managing volunteers is tacked onto existing roles rather than it being a dedicated roles.
Voluntary sector infrastructure funding has reduced in real terms. The Feb 2023 360 Giving report highlights how VCS infrastructure funding, in the last 12 years has reduced, in real terms, compared to the rest of the sector.
Weak national bodies – the national agencies which represent and champion volunteering and volunteer infrastructure do not have the clout and influence to persuade national and local government to invest in this area.
The economic value of both volunteering and the infrastructure needed to keep it prospering and responding to needs is not understood. Obviously, local authorities and funders do understand it has a value, but they do not understand what they receive, in monetary terms, for their investment. Because of this, investment has reduced and, in some areas, has ended (for example, very sad to hear of the closing of Volunteer Centre Swindon)

The Value of Volunteering?
If we can solve the issue of understanding the value of volunteering this will go a long way to help solving the other issues.

There is an often-used quote in our sector by Sherry Anderson, “Volunteers are not paid; not because they are worthless, but because they are priceless.” As much as I love the sentiment behind this, it is also extremely unhelpful as we live in a society where only things with a clear economic value are supported, developed and invested in.

The benefits of volunteering for the individual and communities are, I hope, well known. As well as the actual impact of the volunteering, for individuals, volunteering helps mental health, builds social and professional networks, develops skills and is fun. For communities, people giving a little of their time formally or informally makes them resilient, cohesive and nice places to live. However, the economic value for these benefits is unknown.

Martin Brookes, the CEO of London Plus (which champions charities and community groups in London), highlighted a useful example that illustrates this issue in a short article ‘A better way to value and think about charities’. To summarise, it describes how volunteers from Good Gym stepped in to deliver prescriptions during the pandemic, as the private sector did not want to do this, not only did this volunteering activity not count towards calculating our GDP, it reduces it, whereas when the private sector carries this task out, it increases GDP. It is just one very real example which shows that as well as the value and impact on our society and economy of volunteering is not being measured or counted, when it does happen it can create a negative effect on the financial measures currently used.

Although the article does not mention it, as it was not relevant for the point being made, but it was the infrastructure organisation Voluntary Action Camden who facilitated the connection between the GPs/pharmacies and Good Gym who provided the volunteers. This clearly shows the benefits of infrastructure organisations, but the monetary value of this very important facilitation and brokerage is also unknown.

Therefore, those who work in the sector, whether it local, regional or national infrastructure, need to quickly come up with some measures of value to demonstrate the importance of volunteering. If we do not, then it could lead to decisions being made to stop investing in volunteer infrastructure with the inevitable consequence of having to re-establish it again later which not only costs more in the long run but takes time to do and weakens the whole sector whilst this happens.

What can we actually do?

The reality of volunteering right now in the UK is not good and looks quite bleak given the structural and systemic issues, but we are not in an impossible situation. Understanding what the problems are is definitely part of being able to create a solution.

Waiting for the cost-of-living crisis to end is not the answer. We need to tackle the issue on multiple fronts and we all have a part to play in the solution.

Showing economic value of Volunteering
Even if they are imperfect, we need to start estimating the economic impact of volunteering and volunteer infrastructure. In his article referenced above, Martin Brookes states, ‘The Law Family Commission on Civil Society offers a large number of very practical recommendations about data. They offer the prospect of improving how we measure the value and contribution of people like the runners of GoodGym in Camden.’

Young People
Pro Bono Economics wrote an article in December 2022 asking, ‘Is 2023 set to be the year of the volunteer?’ highlighting that there could be a wave of new volunteers stating, ‘1 in 6 young people, aged 18-34, plan to start volunteering. At the time of writing (March 2023), we are not seeing a lot of this yet and some of the structural issues of volunteering, particularly lack of flexible volunteering, are likely holding this back. However, having said that, one Hammersmith & Fulham VIO reported ‘we need volunteers and have less applications from adults and more from young people.‘ So, as well as making volunteering more flexible we need to make changes so that more younger people can get involved.

Increased Awareness of Need of Volunteering
When people think there is a real need or crisis, they step up to volunteer. This has been proven. Right now, in general terms, no one really knows that there is a real need for volunteers.

Although many volunteer infrastructure organisations do very well with social media and communications, none of them have a loud enough voice for this current situation. These organisations need help from others with bigger voices such as local authorities, national bodies and the government to significantly raise the profile of the ask for volunteer support. For example, a national promotion but locally delivered would be very impactful. However, these need to be coordinated between national and local bodies to be effective as the poorly thought through Big Help Out has shown.

Local authorities can play a stronger role in amplifying the messages of volunteer infrastructure organisations and if they can work together on dedicated campaigns it can reach more people who could volunteer.

Conclusion

Volunteering is not dying, far from it, but it is injured. The need for effective healthcare, i.e. local and national volunteer infrastructure, has never been stronger.

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Participaction – The new name for volunteering

I have been in denial. No, I am not doing a bad joke about a river in Egypt, but referring to my coming around to the notion that the word ‘volunteer’ is not as cool and sexy as it used to be. The concept of giving time to help others is still very much cool, it’s just that the word volunteer is not so much.

This is hard for me to accept. I am a passionate and determined proponent of volunteering and firmly believe and can demonstrate that volunteers, every day, change the world to make our communities better places. How can the notion of someone giving just a little bit of their busy lives to help someone else not be seen as amazing or cool?

The problem is that volunteering actually covers a vast range of activities but is often used to refer to something far more narrow, namely formal volunteering, i.e. a formal defined in detail volunteer role within a charity, usually involving the volunteer committing time regularly on an ongoing basis. The reality is that volunteering covers all giving of time, including informal volunteering such as being a good neighbour or baby-sitting for a friend, micro-volunteering such as Be My Eyes or ad hoc volunteering.

Although any giving of time is volunteering the core work of Volunteer Centres is focused on formal volunteering, acting as a much needed volunteer recruitment service for the thousands of great charities that desperately need the involvement of volunteers to support their service to the community. However, I strongly believe that Volunteer Centres should not be constrained by such a narrow field of work and that they can and should work to promote and develop all forms of volunteering.

In the last couple of years the word ‘participation’ has become more popular. There is a significant strengthening trend and desire to create a more participatory culture within communities where people feel they should and can be the part of a solution to a problem rather than simply writing a letter of complaint for their local authority to deal with. To help make communities more resilient and cohesive, there needs to be tools as well as a culture to enable people, organisations and businesses to work together to tackle priority social issues.

Although this type of participation or social action is, technically, very much volunteering it is not really seen as such by those who are doing it. I know of a couple of people who would actually hate and object to being described as someone who volunteers but they often give their time informally, which is still volunteering but they will not hear of it. Those in a street who campaign and fundraise to improve the environment and air quality in their area would probably not consider themselves volunteers, but yet they are.

So, instead do we say they are participating? The word participation is by itself too vague to be used. It’s not enough to say someone is participating, it needs to be stronger and suggest something positive, that it creates action leading to a change.

Put that all together and we have Participaction. Admittedly, the word looks better than it sounds, but it encapsulates exactly what is desired from volunteering today. Participaction covers both informal and formal volunteering that delivers positive action through a person participating in their local community. I am not suggesting abandoning the term ‘volunteering’ but sometimes new terms help focus motivations through aligning with current trends.

So Participaction is still volunteering but it’s framing it in a way that reflects the way people want to volunteer today. Whether it’s formal or informal, volunteering today needs to take a participaction approach to get high levels of engagement and support.

What if everyone stops volunteering?

Don’t worry they are not about to, but what if they did?

I am very pleased that I (Works4U) am launching the ‘What if everyone stops volunteering?’ UK Report today!

This is available to download at Works4U’s website: https://www.works-4u.com/what-if

This report is yet another example of me giving myself extra work when I think I have had a ‘good idea’! It was not intended to be a report initially, just a blog post as a follow on from my volunteering cake analogy (that volunteering is not a nice to have like the icing on the cake, it is key ingredient of the cake itself) which states without volunteering society would crumble. I thought it would be interesting to look into further just what would happen if everyone stopped volunteering?

What if everyone stopped volunteering is a BIG question that a blog post would not do sufficient justice to. Also, I realised that just me answering this question would not be sufficient, so I called on my contacts and made lots of new ones to get 33 expert stakeholders to also answer the question based on their organisation and/or their experience.

I also realised to give a full comprehensive answer to this question would be hugely difficult but thought focusing on areas that people do not always associate volunteering playing an important role would help those who may not have considered the importance of volunteering, just how vital it is to the everyday functioning of UK society. As one example, the chapter on law and justice may surprise some, even those who work in the voluntary and community sector, with fantastic contributions from the Police, LawWorks and Law Centres Network.

Other sections include Democracy, the Environment, Young people, Health & care, Communities, Emergency Response. Each individual section illustrates just how devastating an impact it would be if all volunteers stopped. When you add all the sections together, which is not meant to be an exhaustive response to the question, you have the inescapable conclusion that supporting volunteering is essential for the smooth running of the UK.

If everyone stopped volunteering and no corrective action was taken then UK society would quickly descend into a dystopian state. This is no exaggeration when you consider the consequences outlined in the report: increase in social isolation, reduced health and wellbeing of the population, decreased social cohesion, lower community resilience, more unequal and unjust society, increase in social disorder, support and education of young people would drop significantly, end of or heavily weakened democracy and productivity of the nation would fall and its descent would quicken.

The aim of the report is not to advocate for more or less reliance on volunteering in the future, although a worthy and useful discussion, the aim is to create awareness of the level or reliance we have right now and the multiplier effects of reduced levels of volunteering. The realisation that the UK is so reliant on the free choice of its citizens giving up their time may be an uncomfortable reality for some, but this perceived vulnerability is also a strength when volunteering is properly supported.

To avoid any of the negative and costly impacts outlined in the report, it argues it essential to support and develop volunteering across the UK. To achieve this, implementing the 36 practical and strategic recommendations of the ‘London Vision for Volunteering’ report would be a great way to start as together these offer a blueprint for developing volunteering for the UK.

The conclusion of the report is to ask for more investment in volunteering at a time of great economic challenges, but given the by far greater financial consequences outlined within it, it’s not a question of whether the country can afford to support volunteering more, but can the country afford not to?

I would like to give a huge thank you to the 33 independent expert stakeholders who gave up their time to provide written contributions to this big question.

The report can be downloaded here.

Volunteering changes similar to changes in television viewing

Volunteering is not declining, it has just changed.

Data shows that rates of formal volunteering have been declining across the UK for a few years now, but does this actually mean the desire to volunteer is declining?

The short answer is no. Volunteering is not declining but the culture of volunteering has fundamentally and permanently changed.

The simplest comparison to help explain is looking at the viewing figures of broadcast television. These have been in heavy decline for more than a decade now. Does this mean television is in decline? No, the way people watch television has changed and some may argue that this has actually increased the desire to watch television output, just not on traditional television broadcast channels.

We now watch television in far more flexible ways, on demand, in a way that suits us, whether streaming or downloading to watch later (e.g. whilst we travel to work). Recently the news reported that YouTube has become the UK’s second most-watched media service, behind only the BBC which has the successful iPlayer platform.

Just as television is not in decline, it has just changed, the same is happening with volunteering. The old days of a charity asking for someone to volunteer a day a week for the rest of their life are gone. People still have the strong desire to volunteer but they want to do it when suits them, to meet their more complicated and diverse personal schedules.

They don’t want to wait weeks or months to start volunteering, they want to begin straight away. Unfortunately, the voluntary and community sector is not ready, speaking generally, for this at the moment and many volunteer involving organisations (VIOs) have actually moved in the opposite direction, being more safeguarding conscious and requiring longer onboarding periods for new volunteers. The result is a decline in formal volunteering.

This move to flexible volunteering is not new and started more than ten years ago, but grew slowly and then accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent cost-of-living crisis. This change is here to stay and the sector has a long way to go to adapt fully. It must be noted that many organisations have adapted or trying to adapt and are getting great results but it is not a one-size-fits-all approach and each individual organisations needs to adapt in a way that is right for them and the resources they have (or don’t have).

VIOs now have to work harder and smarter to recruit and retain volunteers but this also follows, in addition, more than ten years of austerity and further and continuing economic hardship. This also contributes to the decline in formal volunteering in the traditional way.

Looking at volunteering overall, however, it is not in decline, volunteering has just changed and the sector is still trying to adapt during an economically very challenging era.

Why promoting volunteering is harder than ever?

It’s very different now compared to 20 years ago.

It is harder than ever for voluntary sector organisations, whether an individual volunteer involving organisation (VIO) or a volunteer infrastructure organisation, to promote volunteering to people who might be interested in volunteering. The world was very different twenty years ago.

For starters the world of marketing has changed. In 2005 there were no iPhones and apps, but we did have email. We had posters and leaflets and do you remember business cards? I actually gave one out last week, but that was an unusual experience. But then it could be just that no one wants my details?!

The average person living in the UK is bombarded with marketing messages from the very moment they wake up until they lay their head back down on their pillow at night. Our phones are often used to wake us up and as soon as they do we will be presented with app notifications, instant messages and emails waiting for our attention, many of them tempting us to buy that thing we looked at once briefly.

After we wake up we may turn on our smart TV, watch YouTube or other streaming service and, again, will be presented with marketing, branding and advertisements in various forms. As we travel to work we will see physical adverts on the streets, on buses and trains. Our heads often glued to our phone seeing more adverts and often hearing them in our earphones as well.

We get to work and all day we will receive emails, perhaps even calls, of companies that want to sell the organisation you work for their product or service. Heaven forbid we pop out for a coffee or lunch and we are again bombarded with marketing messages all around us as well as on our phones that we cannot stop checking.

This continues for the rest of the day as we travel home and then spend our evening being subtly and not so subtly marketed too via our televisions and phones.

Realising this, what percentage of the marketing messages we receive throughout an average day are related to volunteering?

It is negligible, tiny and mostly barely noticed. When voluntary sector organisations try to promote volunteering we are competing with every other single marketing message.

Being realistic the best a volunteer involving organisation (VIO) can do is:

encourage people to follow its social media accounts
utilise SEO so people can find its website
hope people sign up to their newsletter (or are newsletters now dead?)

If we get an email address we can send a targeted message so it has an increased chance of being read if they have shown interest previously, but even then we are still competing with all the other messages, not just email, we receive.

Too many volunteering platforms
I hope it is not a controversial thing to say, as it seems rather obvious, but in the UK we have too many volunteering platforms. There are too many websites, platforms and apps to search for volunteering and more keep on coming. This means that there is not a single place for an individual to go to find a suitable role as they are spread across these ever-growing platforms and apps.

During my working leading the London Vision for Volunteering report (March 2025), many Londoners complained how it was difficult to know where to look for volunteering opportunities.

“if you are not already linked into local networks and don’t know what platforms exist then it is hard to know where to start.”
Londoner feedback to London Vision for Volunteering

Up until the mid 2010s there was mainly one national website for volunteering, called Do-it and pretty much all local volunteer infrastructure systems used a local Do-it database that fed into the national one. Because the new version of Do-it in the mid 2010s did not have a free to use local database, volunteer infrastructure organisations each went their own way and started to use a platform that worked for them, e.g. integrating with their other systems and work as well as within their ever-decreasing budget.

In 2025 there are now a number of different platforms used by volunteer infrastructure organisations across the country which are not joined up. In London, Simply Connect London joins up the London boroughs which use the Simply Connect platform which is about half of them. As well as the local authority area platforms across the country there are a number of different apps and this year the NHS has launched its national volunteering platform (currently still in Beta form) and the Royal Voluntary Service will be launching a new national platform on October 17th.

If you are VIO looking to promote a volunteer role you will likely have a local platform you can use and your own social media, but where else do you choose? Other platforms mean more work in uploading the information in each provider’s specific way. Most VIOs just don’t have this time or resource.

Wrapping this up
All these factors together means that connecting a person who wants to volunteer with an organisation who needs a volunteer is so much harder than it ever used to be. Promoting volunteering opportunities now means to compete with global brands with a budget of millions plus dealing with an over complicated web of mostly unjoined up volunteer brokerage platforms.

The Volunteering Multiplier Principle

Have you heard of the Volunteering Multiplier Principle?

The Volunteering Multiplier Principle states that changes to the overall level of volunteering lead to a much more significant change for society and the economy.

For example, if the general level of volunteering for the UK increased by 1% the knock-on multiplier effect would lead to a much larger boost to communities and wider society in ways that also benefit the economy. In contrast a 1% decrease would lead to a bigger negative impact on communities, wider society and worsen the economy.

This is almost an extension or extrapolation of my volunteering and cake analogy (apologies if you are already bored of hearing this) where I liken the mistaken perception of volunteering as being the icing of the cake of society, whereas the reality is that volunteering is a key ingredient of the cake itself. If there is no volunteering then the cake will crumble completely. The Volunteering Multiplier Principle implies that increases to volunteering will create a disproportionately much better and bigger cake and decreases to volunteering will make the cake disproportionately worse and smaller.

So how does volunteering have this multiplier effect?
Volunteering has multiplier benefits for the individual as well as for groups or general levels of volunteering in a region or country.

When an individual volunteers, several effects will occur:

(i) The volunteering act benefits a person, community or environment

(ii) The volunteering benefits a community group, charity or other organisation who organised the volunteering, e.g. it helps them to do something they could not otherwise do or do more of something that benefits others

(iii) The act of volunteering benefits the person doing the volunteering, whether is physical or mental health, improving social and professional networks etc.

Therefore, the multiplier is achieved from the volunteering effects of (ii) and (iii).

When assessing the general level of volunteering, i.e. all the individuals who volunteer in a country or region, you get the same outcomes listed above. If this general level of volunteering drops then:

(a) A lower level of volunteering takes place and so there is a drop in support for the community or environment taking place

AND

(b) Lower levels of volunteering means community groups, charities and other organisations are less supported and so can do less or have to stop doing things they want to do to help people, i.e. their capacity drops

(c) Lower levels of volunteering means that fewer people are getting the physical and mental health benefits from volunteering and more people are socially isolated. This has obvious knock-on negative effects with increased demand on health services as well as lower employment and productivity.

However, if the general level of volunteering increases you get the same multiplier effects of (b) and (c) but with a positive impact.

How big is the multiplier effect?
This is an area we need to research more but volunteering experts and practitioners will say it is significant. However, because we do not have measurements or reasonable estimates this multiplier effect is not taken into account when making investments in volunteering (at all levels).

Obviously, the multiplier effect will be smaller or larger in different circumstances and for different volunteer roles. Nevertheless, it does not mean we cannot propose to establish a rule of thumb in the meantime which will redress the inaccurate perception of the importance of volunteering in society.

If we came to accept the Volunteering Multiplier Principle, decision makers in organisations, local, regional and national authorities would be able to confidently invest in volunteering knowing the return on investment will be significantly higher than the outlay.

Importance of Volunteering: The Cake Analogy

When describing the importance and, in particular, the perception of the importance of volunteering, my cake analogy has become quite popular. Well, everyone loves cake don’t they?

Volunteering is most commonly seen by wider society and decision-makers as a ‘nice to have’, like the icing on the cake of society. People will always say positive things about volunteering and that it should be celebrated but they often do not recognise just how important volunteering is.

By referring to volunteering as the icing on the cake it means people think of volunteering as something that makes society nicer but if you take it away you still have a good cake, i.e. a functioning society. The reality is, however, that if everyone who volunteers, whether formally or informally, stops volunteering tomorrow our society would fall apart very quickly.

Volunteering is not just about charities, volunteering is key in so many other areas of our society:

Health and care
Housing
Sports
Arts and culture
Education
Emergency response/Community resilience
Law and justice
Community groups, clubs & events
Faith/religion
Defence/military
Politics

Therefore, volunteering is not the icing on the cake of society, it is a key and essential ingredient of the cake itself.

My surprise at being the main sponsor for Volunteers’ Week

Works4U is the main sponsor for 2025 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.

Works4U Dominic Pinkney and Martyna Bielecka holding Works4U sign

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.

Dominic Pinkney, Mayor of Hammersmith & Fulham, and Hammersmith & Fulham Volunteer Centre colleagues launching Volunteers' Week in 2013 in Hammersmith's Lyric Square — Launching 2013 Volunteers’ Week in Hammersmith’s Lyric Square

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.

Dominic Pinkney in Volunteers Week hat — I found my Volunteers’ Week hat from 12 years ago

London Vision for Volunteering

Since May last year I have led the ‘London Vision for Volunteering‘ programme and in March 2025 we launched the final report and its 36 recommendations.

I am so proud of this work. Not just because I think it has produced some great recommendations that act as a blueprint for developing volunteering across the capital, but particularly as it has been a true collaboration that has brought input from every single borough in London. All 33! The report has a really good mixture of both practical and strategic recommendations. It is both ambitious and realistic about how change needs to come about .

Every person who writes a report such as this must think their report is really going to bring about change, but it is extremely rare that one ever does. Even where there has been lots of positive feedback and enthusiasm, like their has for this piece of work, there is still the strong likelihood of it being both praised and then forgotten about.

I built into the methodology some factors that might help its success. The first was to release the draft report with its recommendations for consultation. This is mainly because I have contributed to reports in the past, through surveys and interviews, and sometimes have been disappointed when I saw the final report that it had ignored or misunderstood the points I had made.

For this report, we published the draft for just over 7 weeks, during December 2024 and January 2025, and spent a lot of work encouraging people and organisations to give their feedback and thoughts. We actively encouraged people to tell us if we had something wrong, forgotten something or had made recommendations that were too weak or too strong, then we wanted to hear about it.

As well as being a good process to get some good recommendations this also means that lots of people, organisations and businesses rightly feel they have part ownership of this report. So, I hope this means they will help share it and promote it but also it means it is harder for anyone else to criticise as the report and its recommendations are not my individual personal recommendations, these are the recommendations that have come from the expertise and experience of stakeholders and Londoners across the capital.

The report also had a great steering group of expert and engaged volunteer stakeholders, the London Volunteering Strategy Group (LVSG). They have been a huge help in all areas of the report and I led meetings with them each month as the programme developed.

I have also been careful to add a caveat at the start of the report by stating that it is not meant to be comprehensive and all knowing, but a bold confident step forward that will develop volunteering across the capital, but needs more input, research and, importantly, oversight to implement the recommendations. This seems sensible and realistic and life and the world changes and so these recommendations are likely to evolve and develop, they are not written in stone. As we implement them we may realise further issues and/or come up with better ways of realising our objectives. That’s all fine with me.

I have also received many nice comments about how comprehensive the report it is, which is great to read but also a relief as we have such a knowledgeable sector who can be quick to say, “but you forgot about …”. Touch wood, I have not received such a comment yet.

Another very unusual, for me, area of work to make this report more successful is to get some high profile people to read it and add some quotes/comments. This was very outside my comfort zone as I do not move in such exalted social circles. I had to find and navigate between the managers, agents and publicists of these celebrities. It made me very glad that I am not famous as I would not want to need such people in my life.

Most of the high profile people contacted did not respond. This could be just that I did not reach the right person but suspect mostly it was that this was not of interest to them or at least their representatives believed it was not of interest? Some did reply thought, via their people, to say it was a pass or not for them or they were focusing on a particular charity. I have no complaints as I do not know them and by contacting them I was adding to the long list of demands they must get from earnest people and organisations asking for help.

It would be bad form to say who said no, but I hope he does not mind as I thought Sir Ian McKellen gave a great and completely valid response for not contributing. He wrote to me, ‘Please forgive my not sending you a comment to be quoted in your report. I just don’t feel qualified.’ That is a totally fair response and very kind and humble that he did respond at all.

Sir Ian did highlight that I was asking people to comment on what is probably a quite technical issue and so it is unsurprising that many people did not respond. I am pleased to say that we did get some contributions from some great people who took the time to read it and write a comment that could be published:

Sir Stephen Fry
Dwayne Fields (Chief Scout)
Dr Debbie Weekes-Bernard (Deputy London Mayor for Communities and Social Justice)
Andy Haldane (CEO of Royal Society of Arts and former Chief Economist at Bank of England)
Margaret Casely-Hayford CBE (Lawyer, business person and Patron of Girls Brigade Ministries)
Fekky (Lewisham rapper and founder of CC Foundation)
Lord Gus O’Donnell

I am unashamedly proud of the report and give the hugest of massive thanks to everyone who has contributed to it.

Businesses: 12 DOs and DON’Ts of Volunteering in the Community

With the rise in levels of employee volunteering, long may it continue, we are seeing marked differences between those who do it well and those who do it … hmm, less well.

Any business who gives its employees time to support their local community or other charity cause is alright in my book, but this sector of work and activity is now, at last, developing to be more impactful and sophisticated so to meet the aims of the business, the community and the employee volunteer together.

There are many businesses who do great and ever improving work and community initiatives, the ones we tend to hear about, but there are also many other businesses who only need to make a few adjustments in their approach and practice to achieve much better results and impact.

Just getting agreement and organising a particular date for staff to volunteer can be a huge undertaking, something the voluntary and charity sector often don’t appreciate, but here are a few general DOs and DON’Ts to help maximise the impact of the effort your business is making:

DON’T do super large team volunteer events (e.g. 200-300 volunteers) without the expectation that the options available and its impact will likely be very limited. Some would say DON’T EVER do such large volunteer events. A business should always be clear about its own objectives for participating, but an activity must come from a genuine community need to have an impact.

Therefore, DO consider splitting your group into teams that can meet a real community need.

DON’T expect to carry out a team volunteer event without some sort of budget. Businesses should never pay to volunteer, but like any event there is a lot of time spent in organising the situation to enable people to volunteer as well as the cost of materials and equipment that will likely be needed. If a business were to organise it themselves, which some businesses do, then they have to spend money on staff time which is more expensive than using a broker or working directly with the charity itself. Brokers and charities need to recover their costs of carrying out this work, as they have staff to pay too. It is occasionally possible for businesses to carry out such work without a charge, but in these cases this will be because the cost is being paid for by someone else (funded project, charity donations etc.).

So, DO have a budget for your employee volunteering as you recognise that the voluntary and charity sector also has costs to recover. If you don’t have a budget, that is okay, but you need to accept what you will be able to do is going to be very limited. The statement by the national Employer Supported Volunteering Network is helpful:

‘Companies or individuals should not have to pay to volunteer, however, where time and resources are needed to enable this volunteering to happen, charities and voluntary organisations should charge for this work to recover their costs.’

You can download the full national ESV Network statement explaining why business need a budget for volunteering events here.

A response to government departments and public sector organisations who say they cannot spend money on volunteering? If you spend money on other events such as training, team-building and staff development, then you should be able to spend money on volunteering events? You can develop your staff and do good at the same time.

DON’T back out or ‘postpone’ at the last minute. Volunteering will never be the business’s top priority and there will always be events and situations where other things take precedence, but once you commit to a date and a project you should stick to it unless it is a true business critical emergency. Backing out will damage your business’s reputation and credibility within the community.

When you DO commit to an event, consider a back-up plan for what to do if an important work situation arises. For example, are there other staff that can cover or should a few members of the team not participate to deal with anything that comes in?

DON’T forget the experience of the volunteer. An employee volunteer will (and very much does!) question what impact they are actually making by carrying out this work? The cause of the charity can be worthy and the importance of team-building is needed, but if the volunteer is not having a great experience then it can have a damaging effect.

So, DO put the experience of the volunteer at the forefront when considering possible projects and evaluate their experiences afterwards. This is where employer supported volunteering (ESV) brokers are so helpful to businesses, as they can source different community project options to meet your needs.

DON’T just think about team volunteering. For the last few years it has been ‘en vogue’ to criticise and sneer at team volunteering and I’ve heard people say “What actual good can a bunch of accountants do painting a community hall?”. Well, they can do a lot and achieve something that otherwise could not happen! I have seen this first hand many times. As long as there is a real need for the team of volunteers and the project is well managed with volunteers briefed and supervised you can achieve great results.

However, DO consider Skills-Based Volunteering options where volunteers can use their professional skills in a new context and environment. When carried out properly, although be prepared that it does require some work and support, it can achieve the greatest impact of all employee volunteering. Some skills-based volunteering can be carried out in teams (e.g. employability workshops), but there is also a huge scope for individuals and very small groups to support voluntary and charity sector organisations in a wide and ever-growing range of activities as well as the possibility of mentoring individuals.

DON’T think you know it all (as none of us do). I’ve seen employee volunteering schemes start up and then shut down, for varying reasons, but one commonality is that the company had decided on an approach without proper consultation with experts in the voluntary and charity sector. As a result they set up seemingly logical and sensible programmes and then seemed confused when they didn’t work? Simply because they didn’t understand how this sector operates.

So DO listen to and ask experts in the field and continuously monitor and adapt your programme to ensure your business, the charity and the volunteer are all being considered. Using ESV brokers and consultants to help test and evaluate your schemes will help ensure a successful employee volunteering programme.

So, if your business does all the DOs then you are on the right track and doing things the right way. However, if your business is doing some of the DON’Ts, then don’t despair, you can easily correct this and be able to achieve more impactful results.

Works4U Wins International Award for Leading Employee Volunteering in UK

Dominic Pinkney and Martyna Bielecka from Works4U celebrate winning Wealth & Finance International Management Consulting Award 2023

I’m quite cynical about awards and believe, mostly, they are BS. However, they can be glorious and helpful BS.

I run Works4U, a not-for-profit social enterprise specialising in employee volunteering, and we were invited to apply for the Wealth & Finance International Management Consulting Awards 2023. Normally it would have been a quick delete of such an email, but we have been working so hard at Works4U this past year to expand our field of work from delivery of impactful corporate volunteering to actually trying to lead and develop employee volunteering across the UK.

So, I decided I would take the time to apply and explain the work we have done with very little resources:

(i) Set up and run a national ESV network for voluntary and community sector organisations to share experiences, information and produce useful tools and resources. These help to not just sustain these services across the UK but also to develop good practice of how they are carried out.

(ii) Produce national research and analysis. We carried out a UK survey of employers and will release findings next month and last month we published the ‘Monetary value of charity trustees‘ report which highlights the importance of this essential volunteer role and will encourage business employees to consider it.

(iii) Produce resources for businesses to develop employee volunteering. Earlier in the year we produced and published the ‘9 Expert Tips for Developing an Employee Volunteering Programme‘. This is a free guide for businesses to help them avoid the common mistakes and pitfall.

(iv) Introduce two brand new quality standards. One has been launched, Lead Volunteering Organisations(LVO) which is a quality standard aimed at volunteer infrastructure organisations. The second which will launch soon, is the world’s first quality standard for employee volunteering, called Employee Volunteering Accreditation (EVA), which will enable businesses to have an independent stamp of approval to show off to their staff, potential staff, clients, investors, suppliers, partners and stakeholders that they a good business who do good things.

As I wrote the application, I realised that we actually had done and were still doing a lot! Week to week you tend to notice more the lack of progress you make rather than the actual progress achieved, so it was almost cathartic to stop and write about all that we had done.

Then I completely forgot about the award application.

Then we won! Then we celebrated.

Works4U winners at Wealth & Finance International Management Consulting Awards 2023. Best Business Support Volunteering Non-Profit Organisation 2023 - UK

As I wrote the media release I had the same feeling of being super proud of the work we have done, as a small team with little resources and time, to progress as far as we have. The award may not mean much to anyone else and I suspect they may have invented a category just for us, but I will take it as it is recognition for all we have done this past year.

So, I still think awards are BS, but they can be good BS.

I want also to say a huge and special thank you to my colleague Martyna who has worked so hard this year to achieve what we have done.