Informal volunteering refers to unpaid help (such as providing childcare or looking after a property) that an individual gives to someone who is not a relative. The 2005 Citizenship Survey identified 68% of people in England had done some form of informal volunteering in the previous year.

Social factors such as gender and age influence

Volunteering can be formal or informal.

Formal volunteering refers to unpaid help given as part of organisations, groups or clubs to benefit other people or the environment. Examples include running a Scout or Brownie group or improving public open spaces. The 2005 Citizenship Survey (Sarah Kitchen, Juliet Michaelson, Natasha Wood & Peter John, 2006) identified that some 44% of people in England had participated in a formal volunteering activity in the previous year.

The chart below (based on Kitchen et al) depicts which volunteering activities were undertaken at least once a month…

the pattern of participation in voluntary activities. Higher proportions of people aged 16-24 participate than those aged 65 and over. However, similar proportions of those aged 16-19 and 65-74 engage in formal volunteering. Women are more likely than men to engage in both formal and informal volunteering.

The Effect of Socioeconomic Status on Volunteering

Again based on Kitchen et al (2006), the chart below records the relationship between volunteering and socioeconomic classification (shown in percentages of workers volunteering by classification of occupation)…

The preference for formal over informal volunteering amongst ‘higher managerial and professional occupations’ - in stark contrast to every other occupational category - can be seen as the work of ORANGE. This vMEME, of course tends to dominate in the selfplexes of the most ambitious. To a ‘high flyer’, formal volunteering is likely to have greater asset value on their CV as it is

clearly visible in a way that informal volunteering isn’t.

Why do people volunteer?

As yet the phenomenon of volunteering is not fully understood. Research, such as that by Kitchen et al, provides some insight into who volunteers to do what. However, the triggers that lead people to volunteer, the motivations they experience in doing voluntary work and the beliefs (schemas) they have about what they are doing are relatively under-researched.

In the UK since the 2010 General Election, prime minister David Cameron has pushed his concept of the ‘Big Society’ as a sort-of alternative to the ‘Big State’ which, due to the country’s deficit crisis, his Government is determined to cut back. Cameron’s somewhat ill-defined vision centres around the concept of volunteers, both as individuals and in the form of organisation, taking on many of the community-based roles which the State had undertaken (directly or indirectly) during the second half of the 20th Century.

Since volunteering is so critical to the Cameron Government’s strategy, research to understand volunteering will need to become an urgent priority.