Voluntary work for charities has become an increasingly popular government-backed activity to be offered in the workplace over the last few years, and has been shown to give great satisfaction to those who volunteer. But is it really a useful and beneficial tool for charities themselves?

Or does volunteering detract from the fundraising efforts of companies and therefore hamper charities rather than benefit them?

I pose this question following many discussions with charities and with CSR professionals from a whole range of large and small employers.

Workplace Giving UK are professional fundraisers, working on behalf of about 150 charities and our remit is to try to recruit long-term, regular donations straight from an employee’s gross pay. This scheme can be known as Workplace Giving, Payroll Giving or Give As You Earn, but is the same scheme and is the most simple and tax efficient way to give regularly to any charity.

We approach companies of all sizes who have a scheme in place but perhaps have a very low uptake, and we also approach companies with no scheme and try to encourage them to offer the facility to employees. Over the last four or five years, we have noticed a real shift towards companies putting more emphasis on their volunteering programmes. However, some of them struggle to find a volunteering model to fit their staff availability and it is also true to say that some charities simply do not have the need for volunteers other than to help with direct fundraising.

We accept that skilled volunteers can be invaluable to charities, whether their expertise is in law, accounting, banking, web design or creativity. It is an opportunity to use specific skills to make a real difference to a particular charity. Unskilled volunteers, however, seem of less benefit. Doesn’t it make more sense for a company to pay for professional painters to go and paint a classroom if that’s what the charity needs, rather than send in a team of amateurs who may take twice as long and not do as good a job? Also does the charity have to work at manufacturing those volunteering opportunities requested by the company on occasion? In these instances, isn’t the volunteering more for the benefit of the company as a team-building exercise?

Another consideration is the division of volunteering time. If you have a team of 10 employees, are they all given the same amount of time off to volunteer, whether that’s one, two or more days a year?  Many companies seem to set an amount of time to give their employees before actually checking with any charities what can usefully be achieved in that time. I have also spoken to a few disgruntled employees during our time visiting workplace across the UK, unhappy at having to cover for their colleague while they are out volunteering. 

Obviously not all volunteering is aimed at charities, I know of a number of employers who set up programmes to provide ‘reading buddies’ for local schools. This sort of community volunteering is often easier to arrange. However, it tends to be the type of project that requires long-term, regular commitment and would not fit the one or two day a year volunteering pattern that many companies offer.

I think that it would be refreshing for charities to come forward and say whether volunteering is of value to them and what type of volunteering they need and want. Equally it would be refreshing for them to be able to say what they don’t want without worrying that they may appear to be ungrateful and potentially losing vital support.  If companies were more aware of the limitations of volunteering, surely it would make their lives easier too? Mary Portas, star of TV programme ‘Mary Queen of Charity Shops’ was an inspiration with her no-holds-barred approach to telling the nation what charities really need to raise funds.

Volunteering cannot be just a box-ticking exercise for an employer. It should be of real benefit to the charity concerned. Perhaps it would be an idea to ask employees to volunteer to give up a day’s leave and simply donate the daily amount they would have earned to their chosen charity? If this is given through their pay, it would be worth up to 40% more too.

That’s not to say there isn’t a place for skilled volunteers and volunteering. We think there is, and people donating to charity should be encouraged to develop a relationship with that charity, but volunteering shouldn’t be at the expense of other forms of workplace fundraising, especially those generating a regular, ongoing income stream for the thousands of UK charities that need support, particularly in today’s climate.

Peter O’Hara is managing director at Workplace Giving UK