Volunteering can be described as giving your time and energy freely, and by choice, without concern for financial gain. It can describe hundreds of different activities that people choose to do to benefit or support others in the community. The word “volunteering” is used for a range of activities such as community service, self-help, charity, neighbourliness, citizenship, public service, community action, community involvement, trustee, member, helper.

There are volunteering opportunities in many different avenues such as health; social care; arts and culture; trusteeship; practical and DIY; management and in the environment. Volunteers save lives (Samaritans, RNLI); help run sports and social events (stewards, fundraisers, St John’s Ambulance); look after our wildlife and natural environment, fundraise, and support vulnerable people.

Volunteering increases community social capital and individual well-being for the volunteers themselves and for the people they support. It can help increase community capacity and build social resilience.

There are 32,000 third sector organisations in Wales, and within these 8,100 are registered charities. Denbighshire has the second highest number of charities per head of population – around 12.5 per 1,000 people. The NCVO Almanac shows the overall income of Welsh general charities to be £1,258million, with 28% of people in Wales volunteering each year.^[1]

During 2017 to 2018 in Wales, it is estimated that approximately 938,000 volunteers contributed a total of 145 million hours of their time each year. Volunteer time had an estimated value of £1.7 billion; estimated to be around 3.1% of Wales’s GDP at that time.^[2]

Charities are able to fill gaps in service delivery that the public or private sectors are not able or willing to fill. By being close to their users, charities have a unique perspective on their needs and how to improve services. There are also high levels of public trust in charities; they are the third most trusted group in society after doctors and the police.  Clear majorities see charities as the best way of channelling good will; think they ought to have a greater role; and believe they are easier to engage locally.^[3]  Many charities also engage in campaigning or advocacy around the same issue they deliver services on.

Benefits for the volunteer

People who engage in altruistic activities (like volunteering), report a greater sense of purpose and meaning in their lives. Many of the key ingredients for a happy and fulfilling life are encapsulated by the “5 ways to well-being” (a set of evidence-based public mental health messages aimed at improving the mental health and well-being of the whole population) and can be gained in volunteering activities: Connect, Be active, Take notice, Learn and Give.^[4]

A number of benefits relating to volunteering have been identified. These include:

• Building of social networks and relationships, creating a sense of belonging
• Enjoyment of purposeful activity, including ‘serious leisure’ activities such as sports coaching
• Experience and skills gained. For example, for employment or career advancement, or simply the challenge of something new
• Improving health and well-being
• Personal development, including building confidence and self esteem
• Experiencing autonomy; developing an experience of and commitment to equality and fairness; improving individual dignity and decreasing individual vulnerabilities
• Self-help and mutual support – for example those whose lives are touched by chronic illness, tragedy or caring responsibility draw benefits from association with others who have similar experiences; and
• A sense of giving something back to society

Benefits to organisations

Many organisations are entirely run by volunteers, and would not exist without them. Where organisations involve both paid staff and volunteers, the most common benefits to the organisation are:

• Volunteers’ involvement can improve open and inclusive strategic planning processes
• It may be volunteers’ activity that achieves the organisation’s mission, with paid staff providing back up support.
• Volunteers add to and complement the work of paid staff. They allow flexibility in service provision and experimentation with new approaches.
• Volunteers may bring added value, through their personal qualities, experience and the time that they give to the client group.
• As representatives of the community served by the organisation, they bring a local voice and add credibility to an organisation. Their ideas and involvement test and enrich an organisation and improve an organisation’s links to community and service beneficiaries.
• Volunteers increase the potential for organisations to be more attractive to funders.

Benefits to the wider community, building social capital

• Service provision: Volunteers can strengthen existing services. They play a very important role in healthcare, working in a range of settings and providing a variety of services alongside paid staff. Hence, volunteering helps to develop a strong civil society and resilient and vibrant communities.
• Increasing social well-being: There is increasing interest in assessing not only economic well-being but also personal and social well-being. Well-being is about satisfaction and happiness, but also about fulfilment and connection with community.
• Democratic participation: Volunteering is an expression of democracy – people exercising their right to associate and act for change. Where volunteers are involved with formal organisations, they can contribute a citizens’ voice to policy decisions. They can also contribute to the shaping of public services.
• Inclusion and social cohesion: Volunteering is accessible to all, including those who may be excluded from employment and from other social networks. It can provide opportunities to foster understanding and friendship between factions within the community and to combat isolation and prejudice^[5].

Volunteering in Conwy County Borough and Denbighshire

The umbrella organisations for the voluntary sector in Conwy County Borough and Denbighshire are Community and Voluntary Support Conwy (CVSC)  and Denbighshire Voluntary Services Council (DVSC). Both are partner members of Third Sector Support Wales (TSSW) and they help to promote, support, enable and develop a sustainable voluntary sector in their area, through the provision of guidance on fundraising, best practice in volunteering, good governance, training and by representing the views of third sector organisations.

CVSC and DVSC both offer comprehensive volunteering support services via their volunteer centres. A volunteer centre offers a one-stop resource for information, advice and guidance on all aspects of volunteering for both volunteers and recruiting organisations. Volunteer Centre staff aim to link the skills, experiences, time and enthusiasm of local people looking to volunteer with organisations seeking to develop their services.^[6]

Volunteering directly contributes to the seven well-being goals in the Well-being of Future Generations Act (Wales) 2015. In Conwy County Borough and Denbighshire, our grants schemes all focus on how projects contribute to delivering the Act. Youth Led Grants list these goals as priorities and require applicants to directly identify which goal their projects contribute to. The annual Volunteering Wales Grants, administered by the Wales Council for Voluntary Action (WCVA), provides support and training for individuals to enable participation in quality volunteering opportunities. These are examples of how volunteering can contribute to, and directly support, the sustainable development principle and the seven well-being goals.

During 2019 to 2020, CVSC and DVSC:

• Provided support to 844 individuals to access volunteering.
• Provided training courses for 660 participants.
• Received and responded to over 3,838 general enquiries
• Received and responded to 575 funding enquiries
• Provided nearly £1,000,000 of funding through grants and loan schemes.

There has been a major impact from the Covid-19 pandemic. Traditional volunteering more or less stalled whilst organisations re-purposed their service delivery online. Many of the traditional cohort of volunteers either changed their role to providing telephone or digital befriending services during this transition phase, or chose to leave. Again, the traditional demographic of volunteers meant that many were shielding.

Some of the people shielding and social distancing, including volunteers themselves, were and continue to be digitally excluded, and this posed challenges during a time when so much of the traditional face to face volunteering was re-purposed into a virtual world. Many volunteers stopped their volunteering either because of their digital exclusion, or because their motivation to volunteer was based on meeting people and socialising.

In contrast to this, however, was the tremendous local and informal emergency response, often at neighbourhood or street-level through mutual aid and pop-up Covid-19 support groups offering shopping and prescription support. This is an indication that more people, across all ages, wanted to volunteer in times of crisis. Vital and essential services via foodbanks were provided by volunteers and full credit must be given also to the community transport schemes taking people for their vaccines.

Indeed, both CVSC and DVSC experienced a huge surge of people coming forward to help. They were referred or signposted to these local informal groups where there was a need, and of course to Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, which in turn were experiencing unprecedented interest and challenges in managing the sudden surge in numbers. The volume of volunteers far outweighed the available opportunities. It has been a turbulent time of re-opening and lockdown; making it difficult to support and manage volunteers and retain their interest and enthusiasm. However, a real positive outcome has been the creation of large banks of potential volunteers who are supported and receive volunteering opportunities on a regular basis.

[1] Third Sector Data Hub – Key data 2020

[2] Government Third Sector Scheme Annual report 2017/18 https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2019-03/third-sector-annual-report-2017-18_0.pdf

[3] Trust in Charities 2020 – overview of findings, Charity Commission

[4] The New Economic Foundation, 2008 https://neweconomics.org/2011/07/five-ways-well-new-applications-new-ways-thinking

[5] Welsh Government Volunteering Policy “Supporting Communities, Changing Lives”, Annexe B, 2015

[6] TSSW Information Sheet “Thinking about Volunteering”