Results from the 2007 National Volunteering Survey

There's some fascinating info in it and well worth a read. Some things that really caught my eye:

- 31% of volunteers felt their volunteering could better organised

- 82% of volunteers feel they never need any advice or support. Of those who do, 94% say it was very (59%) or fairly (35%) adequate.

- 77% of volunteers who incur expenses never get them reimbursed (which seems to have gone up since the 97 survey)

- 3% of volunteers receive some form of payment above and beyond expenses.

- 78% of volunteers aren't interviewed. Worryingly when this is broken down by activity this includes: befriending (57% not interviewed), giving advice, information, counseling (68% not interviewed)

- Of those interviewed, 99% of volunteers did not mind being interviewed.

- 11% of references were taken up.

- 65% of volunteers said receiving a role description would not be a good thing.

- 2% of volunteers considered stopping because of concerns of risk.

- 28% of volunteers felt there was too much bureaucracy

- 17% of volunteers felt that volunteering was becoming too much like paid work.

- 50% of volunteers felt that recognition was not important.

- 57% of people who don't regularly volunteer would like to spend more time volunteering

I think the first thing to say is that volunteer management has considerably improved in the last 10 years bearing in mind that the number who said their volunteering could be better organized has gone down from 71% in the 97 survey to 31% now. However that is still nearly a third of people who aren't happy.

The survey reveals a number of challenges for us as a profession such as why do so many volunteers feel they don't need any advice or support, why are so many volunteers in potentially sensitive activities not being interviewed and how do we ensure better re-imbursement of expenses (the survey does show why this happens and there are clearly challenges for both the organisation and the volunteer)

There also a number of challenges to the accepted orthodoxy eg half of volunteers not believing recognition to be important and more than half not thinking a written role description is needed.

One of the key areas I think is the bureaucracy or 'professionalisation' of volunteering. One the one hand, if 57% of volunteer befrienders don't even have an interview (which i think is very worrying) than in some areas there clearly isn't enough. But with so many saying they don't need a written role description then I think in other areas we're allowing the bureaucracy to spill over into the volunteer's experience when, as far as possible, it should be kept behind the scenes (and a quarter do say there is too much bureaucracy).

Here's a link to the full survey results on website for the Office of the Third Sector 

Helping out: a national survey of volunteering and national giving [PDF 822KB, 134 pages]