What is volunteering?

Volunteering is when someone spends unpaid time doing something to benefit others, outside of the volunteer’s family and friends. Volunteering can be formal and organised by organisations (such as voluntary led groups, charities, social enterprises or public sector organisations such as libraries, schools or hospitals), or informal within communities and neighbourhoods. Volunteering should always be a free choice made by the person giving up their time.

What sorts of roles do volunteers do?

The kinds of roles and responsibilities people can take on as a volunteer vary enormously and depend a lot on both what an organisation or community are hoping to achieve, and the skills and motivations of the volunteer. People may volunteer regularly, or as a one off, as trustees of a charity or delivering a service, acting as mentors, befrienders, coaches and counsellors, providing expertise for free or pitching in to lend a hand to get a task done. They may look after finances, or children, represent or advocate for others, give tours at local attractions, litter pick in parks, conserve wildlife for future generations, or drive a community bus!

If you can think of it, it is possible someone has volunteered to do it. Whether a role should or shouldn’t be a voluntary role is a complex consideration – that is down to an organisation and an individual, but some roles may be more appropriate as paid roles.

How do organisations find and recruit volunteers?

Potential volunteers can be reached in a variety of ways, such as through word of mouth, local Facebook groups, magazines or community noticeboards, WhatsApp groups, flyers through doors, via local schools, colleges or universities, through speaking with corporate organisations or through advertising on volunteer recruitment websites and platforms. Different techniques will reach different people, and organisations should consider trying a range of tactics.

Some volunteering roles will have a formalised role description, and recruitment process – especially if the role involves things like a lot of responsibility, lone working, or working with children or adults with vulnerabilities. Writing a role description can be a very helpful exercise regardless of the role in that it can help an organisation to work out what they need help with, and the sorts of skills they need the person helping to have.

It can also help in working out who might like the sound of the role! Formalising a recruitment process can help you to make informed decisions about who is the best fit for a volunteering role (and be transparent about this), give potential volunteers a chance to find out more, and help to keep everyone involved in your organisation safe and well. It may be appropriate to ask for and check references of any potential volunteers. Find some more info here.

Who can volunteer?

In the UK everyone has the right to volunteer – but not every organisation will be equipped to support safely volunteers under 18 and not every person who applies for a volunteering role will be accepted as a volunteer.

Volunteers can be students, asylum seekers, benefit claimants, parents, professionals, retired people or someone else! Sometimes people are supported to volunteer (such as someone’s workplace giving them days out of work to volunteer) and sometimes people face barriers (such as job seekers who may only be allowed by the Job Centre to volunteer if it doesn’t negatively impact their job search, or people with disabilities or English as an additional language that are under supported).

Organisations should do their best to have inclusive volunteering practices, and support people to volunteer – whilst ensuring the volunteering arrangement is beneficial to the organisation, the volunteer and anyone the organisation seeks to benefit. A good Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policy and procedure should also consider volunteering. Another way to make volunteering more inclusive is to ensure it doesn’t cost people something to volunteer – covering any volunteer expenses (such as travel, specific equipment needed to do the role or refreshments) can go some way to address this.

Do volunteers need DBS checks?

That depends entirely on the role! For more info about this we suggest you read our ‘Introduction to DBS checks’. Anyone can request a basic DBS check for themselves, and some organisations require all their volunteers to have this (sometimes paying for this – which is good practice if possible), however it is important to not assume this level of check is enough for the role you are recruiting to.

Why would someone want to volunteer?

People are motivated to volunteer for lots of different reasons. Below are just a few:

• Helping a cause they are passionate about
• Their religion or belief encourages it
• Meeting new people
• Trying something new
• Getting out the house
• Developing their skills
• Adding something to their CV
• Improving their local area
• Gaining experience to get into work or change jobs
• To use skills they have, but don’t get to use otherwise

Do volunteers need a manager?

There isn’t a simple answer to this, but many organisations have dedicated roles that take on responsibility for recruiting, coordinating, supervising and supporting volunteers or sometimes these responsibilities fit within someone’s broader role. This role may be paid or unpaid. The more volunteers an organisation involves, the more reliant an organisation is on volunteers and the more complex the volunteering roles themselves are the more likely an organisation may benefit from a dedicated role supporting volunteers and volunteering. For more thinking around this take a look here.

How does volunteering differ from employment?

True volunteering is not under a contract and is therefore not employment. Employment is paid work; true volunteering is not. To avoid a volunteer becoming an employee in the eyes of the law, an organisation needs to ensure:

• Only cover exact expenses, or a reasonable estimate of, and have a paper trail about this/reimburse based on receipts.
• Don’t make the cost of any training repayable if the volunteer leaves the role
• Volunteers aren’t obliged to do any work, and the organisation isn’t obliged to offer any – a volunteer can refuse to do something
• Avoid any hard or fast rules on how long someone has to volunteer for (instead you can suggest reasonable hopes or suggest a volunteering term to allow the volunteer and organisation to both gain the most benefit)
• No employment-based language is used in volunteer paperwork or advertisements (e.g. volunteer role, not volunteer job, agreement not contract, hopes not expectations)
• Have separate policies for volunteers and employees where appropriate (a separate volunteer recruitment/supervision/problem solving policy may be sensible, but any EDI, Health and Safety, Safeguarding and or Data Protection policies should likely cover both groups)

Disclaimer

We make every effort to ensure that our information is correct at the time of publication. 

This is only intended as a brief summary of relevant issues and information. Legal advice should be sought where appropriate. The inclusion of other organisations in this information does not imply any endorsement of independent bodies, they are just for signposting purposes.

Voscur is unable to accept liability for any loss or damage or inconvenience arising as a consequence of the use of this information.