The need for charities to stop living in the past is essential if they are to attract volunteers to their organisations, it was claimed today at an event to mark the launch of Student Volunteering week.

Rob Jackson, who works with volunteers at the Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB), said that it was time organisations started to recognise that the majority of volunteers are no longer from an older generation who see it as their ‘civic duty’.

“The problem is that these are the people we have always focused on, and as a result we’re not creating the flexible forms of volunteering that people want these days,” he said. “People now are very demanding about what they want volunteering to be, and about what they want to do. It’s got to be on their terms, and that’s what we have got to get used to.”

Other speakers at the event, which was entitled “The Bling Factor” and organised as part of Year of the Volunteer, included Richard Harries, head of the Volunteering and Charitable Giving Unit at the Home Office, Tom Green, editor of the volunteering website, do-it.org.uk, and Anna Wallace, volunteer co-ordinator at Community Action at Leeds Metropolitan University.

Wallace agreed that a change of attitude was required but that organisations must continue to give a balanced perspective of what volunteering has to offer. “The image of volunteering must reflect the true picture”, she said. “Some volunteering opportunities may be boring to some but be very rewarding to others. Volunteering is not really ‘bling’, so the image can create false expectations.”