One of the most common worries I hear from organisations developing volunteer strategies is that recruitment is getting harder. There's a real sense that it's difficult to find people who want to volunteer.
I understand why it feels that way. But when I look at the evidence, I see a different picture.
Asking the people who don't volunteer
To understand the barriers better, I focus a lot of my research on people who don't volunteer. They're the people we most need to hear from, and the ones we usually don't ask.
When I brought together findings from several projects, this is what people told me was stopping them:
39% didn't know how to find opportunities
28% felt they didn't have enough time, although interestingly many of them had five to ten hours to offer
19% couldn't find the right role
13% had personal reasons, such as health or caring responsibilities
3% had a bad experience of volunteering before
Only 2% said they simply weren't interested in volunteering.
This fits with what Reach Volunteering are seeing. They've had a big increase year on year in people wanting to volunteer, with 16,301 people registering with them in 2025.
Their volunteers are mainly under 40 and from a wide range of backgrounds, which challenges the idea that people don't want to volunteer any more.
What this means in practice
The encouraging thing about this data is that the solutions are fairly simple. None of them needs a big budget.
Better marketing. If 39% of people don't know where to start, the biggest win is helping them find us. That usually means working closely with marketing and communications colleagues: sharing this kind of data with them, writing role adverts together, and making sure volunteering appears on the same channels as everything else the organisation promotes. It's also worth testing your own sign-up route. When I mystery shop volunteer journeys, around half of my enquiries never get a reply.
Be clear about time. Many people assume volunteering means a big commitment. Putting the time up front ("two hours a month", "one Saturday a year") helps people see that a role could fit around their life. Five to ten hours is a lot of time to offer, if we make roles that fit it.
Offer variety, and help people choose. One-off roles, remote roles and roles people can do with friends or family all widen the door. So does a friendly conversation that helps someone find the right fit, rather than leaving them to work it out from a long list.
Over to you
I'd love to hear from organisations that work brilliantly with their marketing colleagues on volunteer recruitment, or that have seen a big increase in volunteers recently. What made the difference?