National survey of volunteering and charitable giving revealed
Howard Lake | 11 September 2007 | News
The Cabinet Office has published the results of a survey ‘Helping Out: A national survey of volunteering and charitable giving’ which examined how and why people engage in formal volunteering, and what they think of their experiences. It also looked at how and why they give money to charity, or what stops them.
More than 2,700 people in England were interviewed, and most had given to charity in the preceding four weeks, most commonly through a collecting tin or buying raffle tickets. Almost half said they had increased the amount they gave since 2000 and just over a third gave more often.
Around two thirds had heard of Gift Aid, but only a third had made use of it.
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Although almost all volunteers said that their efforts were appreciated, nearly a third said their volunteering could be better organised and that there was too much bureaucracy.
Around 60 per cent of those interviewed had volunteered in the past 12 months, and most cited benefits of volunteering such as satisfaction from seeing the results, a sense of personal achievement and the opportunity to meet people and make new friends.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.