6th May 2026
Reflections on our ‘Bridging the Participation Gap’ roundtable series
Volunteer Scotland’s Chief Executive, Alan Stevenson, shares his reflections on our recently published ‘Bridging the Participation Gap’ roundtable report.
Last September, we welcomed with cautious optimism the news that formal volunteer participation in Scotland had rebounded to 25% in 2024, after dropping to its lowest level of 18% the year before (Scottish Household Survey).
After several years of declining rates, this brought an initial collective feeling of relief. However, our Research & Policy Team quickly pointed out that demographic groups were not experiencing the same ‘lift’ in participation. Much of our work is focused on the inclusivity of volunteer participation, and the headline results brought a renewed concern particularly for disabled people, those with lower household incomes and those living in our most deprived communities. We began to discuss what we were calling a ‘participation gap’.
We wouldn’t be able to dig further into these results until we could get our hands on the raw Scottish Household Survey data set. The Scottish Government release datasets these publicly but it’s typically many months before this analysis can be undertaken. At this stage, while we could hypothesise what was going on (our recently published State of Scottish Volunteering Report speaks to this also) we were light on intel in terms of what the sector and Volunteer Scotland, could practically do about it, and within the next funding cycle.
The ‘Bridging the Participation Gap’ roundtable series emerged from this challenge. We captured insights from 180 stakeholders, representing volunteers, volunteer involving organisations and enablers (a term we’ve coined to represent funders, rule makers and infrastructure bodies). Unsurprisingly, participants often wore several ‘hats’. From last October to March, we ran nine roundtable discussions including a ‘mega roundtable’ with a room of 100 sector stakeholders at SCVO’s Gathering Event.
Holding space for colleagues across the voluntary sector to grapple with the issues affecting volunteering participation, and also to listen firsthand to what works across different settings, has been an immensely valuable process. I’d like to extend our gratitude to all of those who took part. We had an incredible response from sector stakeholders and volunteers.
We’ve now reviewed all these inputs, running to hundreds of pages of notes and from here synthesised this material into just seven cross-cutting themes. For each theme we’ve provided an extract of the most pertinent points, illustrating where possible with examples. Distilling down an enormous volume of material in this way has been no small task for our Research & Policy colleagues. You can read the detail within the Roundtable Report.
The seven cross-cutting themes are:
- Volunteer managers don’t have the resources they need
- Financial support for volunteering is fragile and constrained
- Volunteering pathways, while vital need to be clear and properly resourced
- Trustee recruitment and retention are sector-wide challenges
- Flexible volunteering roles are key to more inclusive participation
- Volunteers with lived experience enable effective and inclusive services
- Volunteers from and working with underrepresented groups are experiencing increased hostility
I doubt that you’ll be completely surprised by these themed headlines, however, there was learning in the nature of the themes that bubbled up. Focusing on ‘volunteering pathways’ was largely viewed as being vital to addressing participation gaps; this included taking support to the community hubs and local services where underrepresented groups are. The focus on introducing lived experience within volunteering programmes, whilst not new, came through time and again. Participants were emphatic – organisations are most effective when people with relevant lived experience are present as board members, as senior leaders and as volunteers. The views from underrepresented groups that volunteering environments felt less welcoming and more hostile, has not been picked up in other surveys, and offers powerful testimony.
Even the more anticipated themes had gems hidden within. The finding that more volunteer management resource was needed was not new but participants cited examples of ‘routine’ decisions needed on individuals with complex needs and volunteer managers feeling ill equipped to make them. Volunteer managers spoke to being unaware of where to access volunteer management guidance or lacking the time to seek it out, of it not giving them what they needed starting out in the profession or when building a new volunteer programme, or being less relevant to their specific context or challenge. For this, many wanted to network with others who had dealt with (or were dealing with) similar challenges. Flexibility around volunteering roles remains a challenge but the insight that the sector could do much better on providing upfront explanations around why onboarding steps or checks are necessary, would make the process much less off-putting and more accessible.
From the conversation with Funders, it was chastening to hear about the exponential rise in organisations experiencing funding crises but encouraging to learn of the types of support that some funders were putting in place to support, particularly grassroots, organisations. Also, the challenges for organisations around trustee recruitment were viewed by many as an existential threat for charities, and while there is an engagement piece that would be welcomed, there were views on more systemic changes needed to Charity Law and alternative models to trusteeship were proposed.
We’ve outlined in our response the steps we plan to take. This builds on our work to date. In the last year, we’ve developed the Knowledge Gateway, a hub of practical resources for the volunteer practitioner community and launched a new national framework for Employer Supported Volunteering. We’ve also shared the voice of the voluntary sector with elected representatives – including the need for Fair Funding – through our No Volunteers, No Community campaign. These more recent initiatives complement our ongoing work to evidence, advocate and promote volunteering widely underpinned by solid volunteering management practices and principles.
However, the report speaks to ‘the more’ that we can do and highlights actions for the sector as a whole. Each of our core programmes, the components of our work, will be influenced by what we’ve heard in the roundtables:
- Through our Knowledge Gateway we’ve taken note of the specific knowledge gaps highlighted and our plan to curate and create content will be influenced accordingly.
- Our Events, Campaigns and Promotions will adapt to the awareness challenges outlined, such as those highlighting trustee roles but also more widely around how we better reach underrepresented groups.
- We’ve introduced a new Participation Development and Membership programme which will focus on encouraging ‘pathways into volunteering’ through an inclusion lens and seek to create a practitioner level network as part of our membership offer.
- Through Research & Policy we’re committed to continue the process of listening and that will mean implementing a Volunteering Voice strategy within this programme and sharing these insights routinely across our programmes and with the sector.
- Our Disclosure Services Team are reviewing their work with regards to helping organisations communicate early the need for disclosure checks and where needed providing sector events and myth-busting materials.
Working across programmes we are focused on addressing the hostile environment for volunteers and staff. This work is underway in partnership with SCVO and others across the sector.
In other words, we’re committed to ‘Bridging the Participation Gap’. We invite colleagues across the Scottish voluntary sector – volunteers, volunteer involving organisations and enablers (including our infrastructure colleagues) – to continue to share their views, to help us collectively ‘sense-make’ and to work with us.
