Volunteering rates rise but remain below pre-pandemic levels

Volunteering rates have risen over the last year but remain below levels seen before the Covid pandemic.

The government’s latest Community Life Survey found that during 2024/25 17% of adults took part in formal volunteering at least once a month.

This is up marginally on the 16% recorded over the previous year but significantly behind pre Covid rates.

Previous surveys before the pandemic found that 23% volunteered formally in 2019/20 and in 2013/14 the rate was 27%.

Informal volunteering rates, defined as helping someone who is not a relative, have remained the same at 24% over the last two years. This rate is also below pre pandemic levels, which were between 26% and 33% between 2013/14 and
2021/22.

The survey also found that the rate of giving has not moved between 2024/25 and 2023/24, with 67% of adults saying they donated to charities in the last four weeks when questioned. The highest recorded rate was 82% in 2013/14.

Ongoing recruitment problems

The government figures have been released amid a raft of evidence indicating ongoing volunteering recruitment problems facing the sector following the Covid crisis.

In October analysis by The Centre for Ageing Better found that 1.16m fewer people aged 50 and over were giving up their time for good causes at least once a month in 2024 compared to 2019.

Earlier this month the Third Sector Trends in England and Wales study found a “substantive overall decline” in trustee numbers, driving by challenges in recruitment facing small charities.

It also found that while volunteer numbers have increased over the last two years for many charities, more than a third are reporting they have failed to recover their numbers to pre-pandemic levels.

Researchers believe there has been a substantive decline in the number of regular volunteers from 4.7m to 4.3m over the last three years.

While middle sized charities, new organisations and those in more affluent areas have “been the most successful at recovering numbers of regulator volunteers”, those in the poorest areas have struggled in comparison, Third Sector Trends in England and Wales researchers also found.