The Economic Impact of the Voluntary Sector

I’m sure we’ve all seen or heard over the years comments that Society would fall apart if it were not for volunteers, many of whom will also belong to a Church or other Faith Community. It’s perhaps where the Churches and Faith Communities belong - there are instances of it being called the Voluntary, Community and Faith Sector.

So, over the years while working for the Churches I have had numerous involvements with the Third sector, as it is also known, where it has been clear that the sector is a very significant economic player!

Some people might think volunteering is all about things like clearing canals and running heritage railway lines, but my experience couldn’t be further from that picture!

Just about every town, city and local authority area has its own voluntary sector body and they will often be a provider of quality care and provision for older people, of Community Transport - dial-a-ride buses and the like and of other significant services.

All this is done invariably by people who care passionately about what they are doing. Obviously there are volunteers involved, but those who are paid are normally not in it for the money; and the people who rise to manage in the sector are - in my experience - enormously capable and professional, acutely conscious of the “greater good”, able and willing to see the bigger picture and not just selfishly concerned with the success of their own project.

In writing like this, it might seem as if I’m trying to say that leaders in the private sector are all single-mindedly ploughing their own furrow with no regard to anyone else. That is clearly not the case. Large numbers of private employers reach out to their local communities and do what they can to support them.

It will often be termed Corporate Social Responsibility.

But, in preparation for this piece, I found a reference to a recent research paper which estimates that the annual value of volunteering in England and Wales is the equivalent of almost 15 per cent of UK gross domestic product - that is worth £324bn a year - that’s £324,000,000!

Some 10 to 15 years ago I was involved in an organisation called RAISE - Regional Action and Involvement South-East.  The “region” was a banana shaped portion of the map around (but not including) London, which included Oxfordshire down through to Hampshire and the Isle of Wight and then across through Sussex and Surrey to Kent.

RAISE conducted and published some research about the economic contribution of the Voluntary Sector across that region.

In 2009, a RAISE submission to Parliament which indicated that in the South-East region, 6% of the total workforce was employed in the Voluntary and Community Sector.

I’ve already noted that the Faith Communities were part of this - the Voluntary, Community and FAITH Sector, with large numbers of Churches, Synagogues, Mosques, Gurdwaras and so on doing sterling work in their local communities to address real social need... and offering this freely and unconditionally.

It is, after all, a requirement of all the major Faiths to be generous to, to support others in need who are worse off than yourself.

If you’re not convinced, just remember where food banks came from!

The Third Sector matters.

Without volunteers our society would fall apart.

Without the Third Sector (which has been squeezed for a number of years by austerity, decreasing grants and difficult finances) large numbers of people would find life much, much more difficult than it is at the moment.

Unfortunately, the funding ran out and RAISE ceased to exist in 2015

However, there are still plenty of ways to support your local community and explore the Third Sector. It is miraculous what a simple Google search can lead to.

written by David Wrighton