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NCVO Time Well Spent – Scottish Analysis

In January 2019, the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) published its report ‘Time Well Spent: A national survey on the volunteering experience’.

Their research was based on an online survey of over 10,000 adults aged 18+ across Great Britain. Volunteer Scotland was granted access to the Scottish dataset to enable it to produce volunteering statistics for Scotland. We have deep mined this excellent data-source to explore the Scottish volunteer experience in detail.

Volunteer Scotland’s analysis has focused on sections 4-8 of ‘Time Well Spent’ report to provide analysis and insights on the volunteer experience that have not previously been available for Scotland.

Presentation Topics

Volunteer Context

  • What activities do volunteers do?
  • Where do volunteers volunteer?
  • When do volunteers volunteer?
  • Who do volunteers volunteer for?
  • How do volunteers volunteer?
  • Why do volunteers volunteer?

Volunteer Experience

  • Overall volunteer satisfaction.
  • Volunteers’ experience of volunteer organisations and volunteer management.
  • Volunteers’ perception of the volunteer organisation and their relationship with others.
  • What matters most for overall volunteer satisfaction.

Volunteer Impacts

  • Volunteers’ perceptions about the beneficial impacts of volunteering on themselves.
  • Any negative experiences of volunteering that volunteers have.

Volunteer Retention

  • How likely recent volunteers are to continue volunteering with their main organisation over the next year and their reasons for continuing or not.
  • The experience of lapsed volunteers and the reasons they stopped volunteering.

Looking Ahead

  • Adults who have not volunteered recently to understand what stops people getting involved in volunteering.
  • Factors which may encourage non-volunteers to get involved in volunteering in the future.
  • People’s interest in future volunteering opportunities, among both volunteers and non-volunteers.

Volunteer Scotland would like to thank NCVO for providing access to their anonymised dataset and their support in reviewing our analysis.

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