Vision for Volunteering

11 April 2022
vision for volunteering
What is the Vision for Volunteering?

It is a 10 year plan that aims to make volunteering across England accessible and valuable to all. The plan will include short, medium and long term goals to promote and strengthen the volunteer sector.

What will the plan cover?

Over the last six months a series of workshops and consultations have been held with volunteer managers, coordinators, policy makers, and volunteers to find out what the Vision or plan needs to include, what the barriers are, and how they can be removed.

The workshops focussed on volunteering across seven themes:

1.     Healthy ageing

2.     Climate emergency

3.     Resilient communities

4.     Employment and skills

5.     Young people leading change

6.     Sport and physical activity

7.     Health and wellbeing

A more detailed summary of the seven areas can be found here.

How will the vision impact me?

The aim for the vision is that across England volunteering will be more inclusive, accessible and valuable. Some of the actions and recommendations can be enacted short term others will take longer to embed.

Whilst some of the actions will be targeted at grant giving organisations, service commissioners, public and private sector partners the majority of recommendations will be for voluntary groups to implement.

The initial recommendations clearly show that there is an expectation that there will be a minimum standard of best practice that all volunteering involving organisations across England will be encouraged to adopt. With clear links to commissioning and funding agreements. If organisations and groups that involve volunteers with their services want to continue to access funding and be recognised as providing a welcoming positive volunteering experience; then they will need to carefully consider how to implement any recommendations from the vision.

The final Vision for Volunteering across England for the next 10 years will be released in May 2022.