Volunteering and wellbeing: call for evidence

We are asking you to send us your evaluations and reports on the wellbeing impacts and outcomes for volunteers. 

We know this is a challenging time for voluntary organisations, and we understand you likely have unprecedented time and financial pressures. Our goal is to find out how to better support the wellbeing of volunteers who contribute so much to charities and communities across the country.

To do this we, along with Spirit of 2012 Trust, have commissioned  the Institute for Volunteering Research (IVR) at the University of East Anglia to carry out a Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) on volunteering and wellbeing. As part of this project, the research team will bring together the most relevant evidence from academia, policy and evaluation to better understand how volunteering is linked to the wellbeing of volunteers.

If you are involved with an organisation, group or club that works with volunteers, or funds volunteering projects, and have looked at the difference volunteering makes, we want to hear from you. 

Criteria

We are looking for:

• Studies and reports that have been completed after 2008, and include author details (whether it’s an individual, group/s or organisation/s).
• Methods used in the research or evaluation may be qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods.
• The research or evaluation explores the impact of volunteering on volunteers themselves.
• A central focus of the evaluation or research should be on the wellbeing outcomes and/or impacts of volunteering on volunteers.

Next steps

Please send your research/evaluations by 10 May to evidence@whatworkswellbeing.org with the subject header: Volunteering and Wellbeing Evidence Review. 

Here is the protocol which provides further information about our approach for the review.

Thank you for your help. 

We will email the findings to everyone who submits material when we publish them.

If you don’t have evidence to submit, but would like to find out the results of the research, sign up to our email alert below.