Volunteering during the recession: Opportunities or Threats?
January 2010

I always like to start off on a positive note so therefore I will begin by looking at the opportunities that have developed as a result of the current economic climate and the opportunities that we could create in the voluntary sector to the benefit of all our partners.

KVC has seen a dramatic increase in the number of enquiries about volunteering during the past year or so. As more people become unemployed and the increased awareness of the benefits of volunteering become more apparent, motivations also change. For many volunteering is seen as a route to employment, building on self esteem and confidence whilst also allowing the individual to share and develop skills. It also provides up to date ‘work experience’ for CVs and recent references, which is very important when job seeking. And the benefits also extend to us in the voluntary sector as we see more and more people searching for a valuable (and enjoyable) experience whilst volunteering. We are working together with the Chamber of Commerce and looking at ways to develop employee volunteering and also ways to employ the skills of the members of the Executive Futures programme they run for those who have been made redundant.

However, along with the opportunity of recruiting more volunteers with higher level of skills and experience we have to consider what will be the impact on us as organisations and what adjustments we can make in order to gain. Most of us are experiencing a tough time due to the recession and are feeling some degree of financial stress due to reduced income or in some cases a complete cut in funding. This is at a time when demand for our services is increasing as well as our organisational costs and we face a situation when we are being asked to do ‘more for less’.

Many organisations have reported having to cut back and in a lot of cases it is the role of the volunteer co-ordinator that is trimmed. The knock on effect is felt by all. Volunteers getting lost in the recruitment process, becoming disenchanted through lack of induction, training and supervision/support and inevitably leaving the organisation. We know that new volunteers and the retention of existing volunteers are the lifeblood of any well run organisation. Many organisations could not exist, or at least provide their current level of service, without the help of volunteers.

The profile of new volunteer recruits coming through are that they are mostly young women with a rich array of qualifications, skills and experience who prefer to get involved in short term or one-off/episodic opportunities. Evidence collected by the Institute for Volunteering suggest that they prefer to help out in education (30%), health and disability (22%), event support management (59%) and a high percentage of them volunteer in order to use and learn new skills (25%) or to improve their career prospects. The majority of volunteers (59%) helped out with more than one organisation. Moreover people who were employees (62%) volunteered more than people not working (55%). These figures also reflect what is happening in the borough of Kingston.

With this changing profile of volunteers we have decided to turn our marketing strategy on its head. Instead of just marketing your opportunities we will be marketing potential volunteers skill sets to organisations.  Every day we are seeing people who have excellent communication skills, organisational and time management skills, people skills (such as caring, negotiating and listening), accountability and assessment reporting, planning skills, budgeting skills and survival skills (such as stress management). We can help and support you to adjust to these changes and develop your opportunities. Here are examples of the types of people we regularly see who want to share and develop skills together with some ideas of what volunteer roles they could do.

Maria Jarvis, KVC  Manager
020 8255 8685
volunteering@kvc.org.uk