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Tuesday Apr 11, 2006
Volunteer recruitment cost
The Year Of The Volunteer Legacy Report reveals that the Government spent around £7 million on the Year. The main purpose was to recruit more volunteers – so how many volunteers did they get for their money?
The Legacy Report is inconclusive:
There is clear evidence that the injection of money into the sector as part of YV05 added to the capacity of the sector and helped it to better respond to enquiries from new volunteers, responses which included the innovative use of newer technology. However, the data on actual volunteering numbers are less certain – while HOCS [the Home Office Citizenship Survey] shows and increase between 2001 to 2005, most of the increase pre-dates YV05. There again, there were events prompted solely by the Year which did attract new volunteers and there may well be a lag effect with interest in volunteering building in the medium term as a result of YV05.
The problem starts, of course, with actually measuring how many people volunteer. Here at YouthNet, for example, we know how many people apply for opportunities via our do-it.org.uk site, but it's much harder to get accurate information about how many actually take them up and for how long.
The Russell Commission charity has tried to put a number on the cost of recruiting and placing volunteers. They are aiming to spend £150 million to recruit a million new young volunteers – £150 per volunteer.
That includes targeting people in hard to reach groups, which is likely to be more expensive. Plus, it's impossible to say at this stage how much the Commission charity will spend on creating new opportunities or whether it will primarily act as a signposting service.
Still, it's a starting point and it would be interesting to hear from other organisations about how much they reckon it costs to recruit each volunteer. Is £150 per person good value or not?
Posted by Tom Green ( 9:15 AM ) Link to this post Comments[0]