At Neighbourly Lab, we have become increasingly focused on the topic of volunteering.
We know that volunteering is hugely powerful – it’s the giving of our own time to a cause, community or interest that we care about, and it can make us happier, more connected to our communities, and enhance our own skills and knowledge.
Through this lens, we have been starting to think about how volunteering can be enhanced and even innovated so that more people can experience its benefits.
We all saw that during the pandemic volunteering rates shot up and millions of people who had never volunteered before were getting involved.
We saw people volunteering for formal organisations like the NHS or big charities like the British Red Cross, but we also saw the rise of something a little bit different – informal volunteering: people volunteering or helping out in their local community by supporting friends, family, neighbours or even strangers who were in need of support.
Regularly we heard stories of people picking up prescriptions for their neighbours, creating street WhatsApp groups to support each other, or reaching out to isolated community members.
The rise of this type of helping out in the local community still resonates with us, but it has become less common and it is something that has not been looked into much.
So, at Neighbourly Lab, we are seeking to explore volunteering both from the perspective of the people taking part in these activities and the institutions/organisations that can encourage people to take part.
We are currently working with the Big Help Out, an initiative to celebrate and encourage people to lend a hand for their local community and charities on 8 May as part of the Coronation weekend celebrations.
We are supporting local councils to use it as a launch pad to facilitate and convene volunteering in their local community, and to encourage residents to lend a helping hand to community members who might be in need.
We believe that local councils can play a central role in sustaining volunteering rates.
As part of this, we will be developing a toolkit for councils to use that seeks to understand the role that they play in accelerating volunteering from the perspective of the Big Help Out, and how they can use the learning from it for their longer-term volunteering goals.
We also want to understand what it is like to help out in your local community from the perspective of the people who are actually doing so, or contemplating doing so.
This type of research is vital, to allow volunteers to play a huge role in shaping and building volunteering opportunities, and because we will also be discovering what motivates people to help out, what barriers they face, and what they would like to see change to enable others to get involved in their local community.
We know that there is a huge amount to learn about informal volunteering and it is something that is often below the radar, so we can’t wait to bring it to the forefront.
We believe this is a truly exciting time to be looking at and encouraging more people to get involved in both formal and informal volunteering, and we hope to share more about this soon.