Mary Jane Roberts, CEO of Doctors in Distress, examines shifting volunteer trends, from digital-first roles to a renewed desire for meaningful, in-person community engagement.
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As Volunteers Week draws to close we’ve seen Government, businesses and organisations across civil society take to social media to praise individuals who give their time to good causes. This is a lovely opportunity for charities to draw attention to the whole volunteer package: telling people how they can help, getting them excited, thanking and praising the people who volunteer for us now. A low cost value-add for your media presence for a vital cog in most charity’s operations. How big is our volunteering army now, and what changes do we see on the volunteering horizon?

It might be interesting to examine the some of the organisations engaging the largest number of regular volunteers. Topping the bill is The National Trust with an astonishing 40,000 volunteers nationally working as guides in National Trust houses, undertaking conservation work, and maintaining gardens and coastlines. Sustaining 500 different volunteer roles in more than 500 sites of history, nature and beauty. Next up is Parkrun where approximately 34,000 volunteers in the UK set up running courses, scan joiners barcodes and marshal, and promote people coming together, being active, social and outdoors. In the world of one-off volunteering Keep Britain Tidy’s 2025 Impact Report records an astounding 342,138 volunteers in their spring collection (just as an aside their estimate is of over 160,000 bags of rubbish collected and 32 tonnes of net and rigid plastic removed from the marine environment.) Looking at this you may feel a degree of warmth, relief that there are good people trying hard in our society, and a general desire to shout ‘Bravo!’.

That list excluded volunteer research, where the UK leads the world in engagement. RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch had a staggering 650,279 participants this year, 68,000 engaged in the 2026 Big Plastic Count, and 21,000 have engaged in The Wildlife Trust surveys.

What is common to all of these huge types of volunteering? Each of these have powerful, clear brands. Easy to attach yourself to, easy to identify. A large, well organised cause that you can slot into. The public are acting like employees who seek and discern the value of their employer brand to their lives, in the volunteer value proposition (VVP). And yes, some of this is as simple as the things that draw individual fundraisers: what merchandise do I get, what do I get to attend, can I feel easily part of something bigger than myself. Without doubt, the first trend to note is the importance of brand to volunteering.

Now let’s look how people are volunteering. Updates to our regular source of data on overall national volunteering come from the NCVO’s UK Civil Society Almanac. The percentage of people volunteering differ by formality: 27% of the population formally volunteer and 46% informally volunteer. People are seeking less process and less sense of barriers to volunteering. This can be driven by social anxieties, not wanting to commit when you are unsure what you are getting into, and the realities of wanting to volunteer but your life not being in a predictable space with the resources and time to do so.

I think we could confidently coin a description of the Era of Remote-Real to describe our current volunteering world. It is no great surprise that an increase in remote volunteering has happened, attributable to speed, reach and acceptability of technology in most areas of our lives. This increase tracks with other shifts to online across ways of working in general. For support roles and helplines this is a wonderful opening-up of new workforce potential for charities.

The ‘real’ part of this is individual quests for analog life and grounded connection to others and place. 81% of volunteering now takes place in a volunteers’ local neighbourhood. Volunteers may be seeking a greater sense of identity, a sense of place, and of connection. Here, good quality research runs out. We can surmise a couple of things. People do seek social connection and to build their social capital. Those of us on the ground will know that many local volunteers eschew technology and particularly want to be present. Some is related to age, but it is far larger as we see the repeated preference for corporate volunteers to do a physical task for a charity. Circling back to Volunteer Value the real life portion provides what in the leisure world would be called ‘experiential’ engagement: think ‘what feelings and moments with others do I get?’.

Which leaves us with arguably the biggest shift to come. The Almanac records 30% of individuals being motivated by having ‘spare time to volunteer’. Significant shifts are due in our relationship to work. The economy will adjust down to a lower number of office jobs available as we experience the AI revolution; in-person experience-led life can burgeon alongside this. Whilst we aren’t directly in the arts, tourism and hospitality which should be the big growth areas; charities are adjacent with elements of each. Part time workers, hybrid retirement, and a recalibration of the sense of purpose, human connection, and value of nature will shift up the numbers of potential volunteers and the return we can all derive from volunteers.

Let’s stretch our crystal ball analogy on. What do we take on for each of you Fortune Tellers out there at your individual Fairs? Set out your stall with a strong brand, clarity of role, ease of joining, a best in class remote offer, and a central plank of real life experiences for the volunteer. And don’t forget the candy floss or the fun of the fair. Your enjoyment matters, and volunteers as much as anyone else will be drawn in by authentic joy.

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