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Innovative methods will entice young volunteers, says report

By David Ainsworth, Third Sector Online, 3 March 2008

Charities should develop more imaginative and targeted recruitment methods to encourage young people to volunteer, a new report urges. Young people, it says, are more motivated by learning new skills and improving their career prospects than their more experienced counterparts.

The Institute for Volunteering Research and the National Centre for Social Research released the document to coincide with the three-day One Life Live volunteering exhibition, which starts today at Olympia in west London.

Researchers asked 2,700 people about their volunteering habits. The resulting report, The Changing and Non-Changing Faces of Volunteering, says most new volunteers are being recruited in their twenties and thirties.

It also reveals a higher proportion of ethnic minority volunteers among newcomers than among long-established volunteers – a trend that researchers say could partly be down to government attempts to engage less active sectors of society.

The most common areas for people who have been volunteering for less than two years are schools, health and disability, and children and young people, while long-standing volunteers are more likely to help with sports and exercise, religion and their local communities.