How did Big Local encourage and support volunteering?

Big Local was a volunteer-led programme and supported many opportunities for residents to get involved, from sitting on the partnership to wider volunteer involvement. Between 2015 and 2023, approximately 1600 partnership members led decisions on how funding should be spent in their areas. This article is about volunteering outside these partnerships and looks instead at the characteristics of popular volunteer opportunities, how the model supported volunteering, and how residents benefitted from being involved. As of 2022, an estimated 6500 volunteers had given their time to support activities and services funded by Big Local.

The partnership members who oversaw how funds were allocated, and Big Local decision-making structures, are discussed in another article.

A core component of the Big Local model was its flexibility and accessibility for volunteers. The programme’s approach made it possible for areas to offer hugely varied volunteering opportunities tailored to the unique needs of each community, and responsive to the context they were working within. The breadth of volunteering opportunities ranged from formal to informal roles, larger to smaller commitments of time and responsibility, and regular to occasional participation. Volunteering roles were also designed to engage communities in often innovative ways, such as supporting roles in events and activities for the wider community. 

In Big Local areas, time-limited projects and events (such as Christmas fairs and carnivals) were most effective in attracting volunteers outside of the partnership. These events brought in an estimated 1,350 roles across 60 Big Local areas in 2021, with environment-focused activities most popular and food provision following closely behind. Time-limited projects and events activities required no long-term commitment and engaged many volunteers at once, to the benefit of large sections of the community. These events created limited, manageable opportunities for involvement, while environment-focused volunteering and food provision opportunities were longer-term but addressed pressing community needs.

The Covid-19 pandemic was a particularly notable time for volunteering, with a surge in informal and spontaneous volunteering across Big Local areas. Many people volunteered for the first time, often through food banks and emergency food distribution. According to a survey conducted with partnerships in 2020, 42 per cent of respondents noted an increase in volunteers following the start of the pandemic. Community centres were vital to these efforts, acting as hubs that provided a reliable, safe place for many communities to organise in response to the crisis. Notably, many of those involved in these efforts did not consider themselves ​‘volunteers’, per se, but simply as members of the community stepping up to help and support their neighbours in times of great need. 

In the wake of the pandemic, the ongoing cost-of-living crisis sustained the need for emergency food provision across many Big Local areas. Volunteering numbers rose along with the cost of food and resources; a further survey conducted with partnerships in 2022 reported that 54 per cent of respondents observed an increase in volunteers over the previous year. This growing involvement highlights how the Big Local model could, by design, accommodate changes in community need, ensuring that volunteering remained accessible and relevant in the face of ever-changing circumstances and even crises.

The Big Local model played an important role in facilitating and supporting volunteering in many communities, actively encouraging resident involvement and ensuring that volunteering was accessible to those who were not partnership members. Partnerships, and where applicable their paid workers, would make volunteering happen through investing in community spaces, funding activities, small grant schemes, and encouraging volunteers. As a result, in many areas, volunteers external to the partnership played an integral role in supporting Big Local work.

The existence of physical spaces – particularly community centres – proved to be especially significant in terms of getting residents involved in volunteering. Many Big Local areas used their funding to establish or enhance local community spaces, leading to greater volunteer involvement compared to areas without such investments. Residents often sought out these centres in order to volunteer, receive support, and connect with their community through a range of services and activities – from taking part in vital food provision to ​‘knit and natter’ groups. The spaces fostered community involvement and leadership, and offered residents a wide range of volunteering opportunities. They also encouraged community involvement by showcasing (in the form of physical buildings or accessible services) the tangible impact that resident-led decision-making processes could have in a given area. 

Though many areas funded activities in community centres, they were not limited exclusively to these spaces; for example, schools and outdoor green spaces, such as local parks, also hosted a variety of activities for all ages. Because investments were generally made in existing sites, residents tended to be familiar with the space already. This familiarity proved reassuring for some residents who were anxious about taking on new voluntary challenges. 

Local Trust has explored why investing in physical assets was so important for many Big Local areas, and how Big Local areas increased community control over community assets and spaces in other articles.

Small grants also encouraged volunteering in Big Local in several ways. This took place partly through grant recipients going on to engage in some form of voluntary work, and partly through grant-funded activities and organisations involving volunteers directly. Grant schemes also supported local cultural events and celebrations that helped bring communities together, which in turn increased volunteering. 

Crucially, the application process for such grants in Big Local areas involved intentionally minimal bureaucracy for residents, making the grants themselves more accessible, and helping ensure that funding went towards volunteering activity linked to local people’s interests and passions. For example, one Big Local area resident started a free, volunteer-led football club in 2019 to address the lack of affordable sports options in their community; with two small grants from Big Local going towards coaching and equipment, the club expanded rapidly, eventually hosting multiple teams and 20 volunteers.

Enabling volunteering and supporting individual volunteers is often highly resource-intensive, and typically requires a skilled paid worker to keep things moving and on track. For example, in Big Local, sufficient time and capacity were essential to reach a wide range of potential volunteers and ensure diversity – especially because faith and personal philosophy played a large part in many volunteers’ motivation. This made outreach an important component of volunteer coordination. 

It also took consistent time and resources to make sure that volunteers knew their efforts were valued, and to manage a wide range of ongoing related administrative and bureaucratic tasks. Partnerships therefore often needed to dedicate resources directly towards sustaining volunteer support effectively, and often recognised and responded to this by paying support workers. However, this support was not limited to workers; many Locally Trusted Organisations (LTOs) and volunteers also took on these responsibilities. Ultimately, having a range of support roles in place helped to encourage a wider range of volunteering opportunities.

Paid workers did more than just keep existing volunteering moving; they also served as catalysts for encouraging volunteers in over half of the Big Local areas, with volunteer coordination making up part of these workers’ roles. In some areas, paid workers were exclusively tasked with responsibility for volunteer brokerage and coordination. 

Workers were frequently based at community centres, where they helped residents develop ideas and identified local needs and opportunities. These accessible bases also allowed workers to support volunteers with the paperwork and bureaucracy that often surround voluntary work and act as barriers for many residents. Notably, workers and community leaders could develop relationships with community members in these spaces, and gauge the point at which people were ready to take the next step into volunteering – and support them into it.

Many related their volunteering back to an individual who made the effort to get to know them and encouraged them to take their first steps, whether through their own idea or involvement in an existing activity. In some cases, these interactions were memorable to the volunteers even years later.

The Big Local model offered accessible and flexible volunteer opportunities that helped build confidence, foster community connections, and enable participation in decision-making for the benefit of the community. Encouragement and support from workers and partnership members were crucial in helping individuals navigate their volunteer journey, especially if they were newcomers to voluntary work in their community (and even if they did not consider what they were doing to be ​‘volunteering’, per se). 

Benefits for volunteers could also be seen in the fact that many often fulfilled their own needs and motivations through their contributions, thus finding connection and a sense of purpose in giving back to their community. Examples of successes within the programme included a small local art project and a girls’ football team, both of which were funded by their respective Big Local partnership but developed and delivered by residents outside those partnerships. In both cases, partnership members and volunteers worked together towards shared objectives and increased community leadership. This dual benefit of personal fulfilment and community enhancement often led to outcomes that were potentially sustainable in the long-term, both in terms of creating a culture of resident engagement and securing spaces and activities for the community.

Through their involvement in voluntary work, some people gained confidence to progressively take on roles with increasing levels of responsibility. One notable way volunteers were involved in decision-making in some Big Local areas was through subgroups focused on specific themes or interests. These subgroups, which included partnership members and committed local volunteers, met regularly to advise on decisions. Less formal meetings generally saw a much higher level of engagement and attracted more diverse community participation. Overall, involving residents in this manner fostered greater community and volunteer participation and leadership, crucially offering residents more tangible outcomes by bringing them into decisions affecting them.

However, some partnerships did face notable challenges around attracting and engaging a diverse range of residents from within their communities. Some Big Local areas struggled to recruit volunteers from particular groups – specifically, young people, ethnic minorities, neurodivergent people, or individuals from distinct neighbourhoods within Big Local boundaries. Partnerships found that some volunteering activities were more successful in attracting volunteers from such groups. For example, spaces and recreational activities with a broad appeal (such as community gardens and cycling clubs) tended to be particularly effective at reaching a broad range of ages, backgrounds, and genders. 

On the other hand, groups focused on reaching specific underrepresented groups (such as women-focused groups, often more attractive to women from ethnic minorities, and youth-focused mental health and environmental projects) helped many Big Local areas reach a broader, more diverse group of residents.