Walking around the Leys Festival in Blackbird Leys at the weekend, I was struck by just how much society depends upon volunteers.
The festival itself was created through a partnership between local residents and the University of Oxford’s Cultural Programme, bringing together community organisations, performers, sports coaches, artists and many others for a day devoted to connection and belonging.
Behind the stalls were people giving their time to support young people, improve health, tackle loneliness, protect the environment, celebrate culture and make their neighbourhood a better place. And behind many of those people, I suspected, were years, sometimes decades, of accumulated knowledge, relationships and quiet commitment.
It brought home to me something that we may be in danger of forgetting.
If you work in the voluntary sector for more than five minutes, you’ll hear a familiar refrain: volunteering has changed.
And, to be fair, it has.
Research consistently tells us that many people want volunteering to fit around busy lives. They want flexibility. They want opportunities that can be done from home, at weekends, online, or in bite-sized chunks. “Micro-volunteering” has become part of the language of charities, and rightly so. Organisations across the country – including my own – are redesigning roles, removing unnecessary barriers and creating new ways for people to contribute.
We should embrace that. We need to.
But I sometimes worry that, in our enthusiasm for the new, we’re quietly undervaluing something rather precious.
Because society doesn’t run simply because we have good public policy, effective policing or a functioning justice system. Important though all those things are, the glue that holds communities together is something else entirely.
It is volunteers.
The Scout leader who has been there every Thursday evening for twenty-five years.
The Guide commissioner who knows every family in the district.
The Cats Protection volunteer who has built decades of expertise in cat welfare.
The Dogs Trust volunteer who never misses a shift.
The Women’s Institute secretary who somehow keeps everything running.
The St John Ambulance first aider who gives up countless weekends.
The Parkrun volunteer standing in the rain with a stopwatch.
The coach of the local under-10 football team.
The volunteer at the community larder who knows every person who comes through the door by name.
None of them is making headlines. None of them is seeking recognition. But remove them, and communities begin to unravel.
The irony is that many of these people started with what we’d now call a “micro” commitment. They helped at one event. They said yes to a friend. They agreed to fill a gap for a few weeks.
Then something happened.
They discovered they belonged.
They developed skills. They made friends. They found purpose. Before long, a few hours became a few years, and a few years became a lifetime of service.
That sort of volunteering is unfashionable in some circles. Long-term commitment can sound old-fashioned, even restrictive.
I think that’s a mistake.
The most effective voluntary organisations depend upon people who accumulate knowledge, judgement and experience over time. You cannot replace thirty years of mentoring young people, rescuing animals, leading community groups or organising events with an app and a rota. Expertise grows through commitment.
My own career owes an enormous debt to volunteering.
Almost every leadership opportunity I’ve had began because somebody trusted me with a voluntary role. Long before anyone paid me to lead organisations, volunteers taught me how to chair meetings, run projects, resolve disagreements, inspire teams and make difficult decisions. Volunteering didn’t just help me contribute to society; it shaped the person I became.
That’s why I don’t think this is an either/or debate.
Of course we should welcome people who can only offer an hour. We should make volunteering more flexible, more inclusive and more accessible. Research suggests that concerns about time, flexibility and cost are real barriers, and charities must respond to them.
But we should also be celebrating something that perhaps we’ve stopped talking about enough: the quiet dignity of sticking with something.
Of turning up.
Again.
And again.
Year after year.
Perhaps the challenge for all of us is not simply to redesign volunteering for modern life. It is to help society rediscover why sustained volunteering matters in the first place.
Because the organisations we treasure, the communities we rely upon and the people whose lives are changed every day are built not only by those who volunteer for an afternoon, but by those who keep coming back.
Old-fashioned volunteering isn’t obsolete.
It’s the foundation on which everything else is built.
