The Tree of Life: movement, dance and creativity in Thamesmead

Property guardian, dancemaker and lifelong creative, Melissa has been putting roots down in Thamesmead where we have a longstanding community of guardians.

After performing at the annual Thamesmead festival, we caught up with Melissa about her passion for dance and event sponsorship from Dot Dot Dot. 

A journey to self-actualisation

A self-described neurodivergent dancer and dancemaker, Melissa draws on an eclectic movement history of classical/contemporary dance, martial arts and somatic practices to create engaging dance art.

Her performance at the Thamesmead festival was named ‘The Tree of Life’ – a piece inspired by Jewish wisdom traditions. “In this dance, I use the tree as a framework to generate movement,” Melissa explains. “This piece is about the journey to self-actualisation and community.”

“When I moved to Thamesmead, I immediately felt connected to the community” she goes on. “There’s a really strong artistic space here. I actually met another Dot Dot Dot guardian through my volunteering at Greenwich Dance where I teach an improv dance class. I knew that I wanted to perform The Tree of Life with him. He’s really talented.”

Dot Dot Dot supports the community

Melissa approached Dot Dot Dot for support with funding after hearing about how we sponsored an open mic comedy night put on by her friend and fellow guardian, Bea.

“I attempted a round of crowdfunding without success. So, funding from Dot Dot Dot was really transformative,” Melissa tells us. “I used the money to hire studio space without digging into my personal income. We were on a pretty tight schedule and only had four days to rehearse. The ‘sponsored’ studio meant we could focus with no distractions.”

In the second half of her set, Melissa led a creative improvisation workshop. “This may have been more nerve racking than the dance itself,” she admits. “But the crowd was really receptive and engaged. I invited people to explore movement with me. There were people there that I’d never met before; and some familiar faces from Greenwich Dance.”

A source of inspiration

Dance has been Melissa’s life long passion, and since 2011 it’s been her fulltime vocation.

She’s collaborated with prominent companies and choreographers across the UK and Europe. Notably, she lived in Hungary where she performed with the Budapest Dance Theatre for five years.

“I then moved to London in 2020,” Melissa explains. “Due to ridiculously high rental prices, I lived in a house share. This was a real shock as I’ve lived alone since I was teenager. I really value my own space. Becoming a Dot Dot Dot guardian allowed me to live alone again and find peace of mind.”

“I’ve also fallen in love with Thamesmead,” Melissa goes on to say. “There’s something poignant about living here. There’s so much natural beauty set against the stark backdrop of Brutalist architecture. It’s inspiring. I think that’s why there’s such a wonderful artistic community here with people producing art from their heart.”

Sponsoring Bea’s open mic night and Melissa’s dance performance have prompted us to start a Community fund for guardians that want to put on events for their local communities. We will be launching this initiative in November with further information about how you can apply!

You can also join Melissa at her dance classes at the Acosta Dance Centre in Woolwich on Wednesdays at 6:30pm. The classes are for everyone from beginners to seasoned professionals. Find out more and book a spot here.

Amplifying her volunteering efforts with Dot Dot Dot guardianship: Karin and the Open HR Forum – Students

With the added support of Dot Dot Dot guardianship, west London guardian, Karin, has been able to amplify her volunteering efforts to enable students to access mentoring from real world working professionals. Karin’s initiative, the Open HR Forum – Students, operates on an international scale to create opportunities for HR students to become leaders in their field.

Developing a passion for communication skills

“One of my first voluntary roles was supporting students and teachers in Slovakian primary schools to develop their interpersonal skills. Since then I’ve been passionate about improving communications between students and working professionals in order to bridge the gap between learning and practical experience in the workplace.

At the start of the pandemic in 2020, I began a course in human resources with the Open HR Forum, to support my continued learning and development around communications in my home country of Slovakia.

I soon noticed a marked gap in the potential to access career consulting and work experience in Slovakia compared with the UK – the only options were for vast sums of money that were unaffordable for most of the students that I knew, including myself.”

Initiating a platform for students to gain real-world experience 

“I identified the need to establish a sub branch of the Open HR Forum specifically for students to gain practical experience and career consultancy. My main aim was to facilitate opportunities for people to be leaders in their field, something that was driven by students, for students, to dictate their own learning and development.

The initiative I’ve created helps to bring HR students together on an international scale, offering them mentoring and support from large professional organisations for free. Each student is paired with a working professional ‘buddy’ who is able to guide them towards applying their theoretical knowledge to practical scenarios.

They can also receive free advice form HR professionals during webinar sessions which has been really successful in helping to feed international knowledge back into the Slovakian education system.”

Utilising guardianship to re-divert time and energy towards volunteering

“Paying lower monthly living costs as a Dot Dot Dot guardian compared with the private rental sector means that I can afford to spend more of my spare time volunteering.

Dot Dot Dot recognising the value of volunteering is really powerful and was one of the deciding factors for me when I became a guardian in 2021. For me, volunteering comes naturally and is something that I’ve always felt comfortable doing – I’ve always cared about giving something back to my community, but being a guardian allows me to amplify my contributions and the amount of time I  dedicate to my initiative.

Guardianship is not for everyone, but there are many advantages to becoming one. I currently live in a large 4-bed townhouse in Hammersmith, west London, and share the property with a teacher, a human rights lawyer and a scientist. I absolutely love my guardian housemates and am so glad to have had the opportunity to meet them – we all have busy work and social lives, however we still find time to meet and relax as a household.

My relationship coordinator, Dominique, has also been fantastic. We feel supported by Dot Dot Dot and their emphasis on being there for the people as well as the property.”

How our guardians will be supporting vulnerable members of the community this winter

With the arrival of the holiday season it can be easy to forget that for many, the winter period spells isolation and hardship. But there are plenty of ways in which you can help to share joy with others over the coming months. We sat down with some of our guardians to find out how they’ll be volunteering to combat loneliness and poverty, and to get some ideas on how we can all get involved to spread festive cheer.

Spotlight on: Charlotte and Shout, a free, 24 hour mental health text support service

“I’ve been volunteering with Shout for more than two years now and it’s the most rewarding thing I’ve done. People can text into Shout if they have no one else to talk to, are feeling isolated or they have relationship problems. Myself and my fellow volunteers are there to provide a listening ear, de-escalate situations and also to empower the texter to seek the support they need.

In my day job, I co-run a mental health app for the LGBTQIA+ community called Kalda. Its mission is to help people to connect with others who might be facing similar issues and to attend weekly mindfulness sessions via our app, which you can search for on IOS and Android.”

Discover volunteering opportunities with Shout and how you can get involved to support their mission.

Spotlight on: Eke and Connection Support, a befriending service working to ensure no one feels alone this year 

“I’m currently linked with six elderly clients who are at risk of social isolation. I get in touch with them to listen, have a chat and brighten their day. If they ever had a problem or needed help with a daily task at home then I’m always on hand to help them out. Connection Support’s team of volunteers also help out with anything from gardening to shopping to picking up prescriptions.

Volunteering as a befriender means that you build strong relationships with the people you’re linked with and provide vital support to those who don’t have families or are on their own, particularly over the Christmas period. They always say it’s so nice to have someone to speak to and to feel valued. That’s what it’s all about.”

Find out more about Connection Support and their available voluntary positions.

Spotlight on: Jack and the Royal Voluntary Service, providing critical support to the NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic

“As an NHS volunteer responder for the Royal Voluntary Service, who collaborate with Good Samaritans, I put myself on duty to take calls and support vulnerable people in England who are at most risk from the COVID-19 virus to stay well. This is to help support the NHS and social care sector during the ongoing pandemic.

Mostly, I have acted as a ‘Check-in and chat volunteer’, providing short-term telephone support to individuals who are at risk of loneliness as a consequence of self-isolation. I have spoken with mostly elderly individuals who live alone and are suffering from ill health or isolating, giving them an ear to listen to and assuring that they are not in danger and have everything they need.

It is a really valuable experience because often the individuals I speak to are suffering from loneliness and to help cheer them up and offer them a form of socialising, it’s rewarding.It’snice that even a short telephone call can boost someone’s spirits and hopefully make them feel better about what they are going through.”

The Royal Voluntary Service are always in need of new volunteers to join their team. Head over to their website to sign up.

Learn more about how our guardian community is dedicating their free time to a huge range of good causes across the country.

Want to apply to be a property guardian? Find out more.

Forming meaningful connections in Oxford: Mori and Oxford Community Action

Through their regular volunteering, Oxford guardian, Mori, is helping to redistribute food and spread the word about the work of Oxford Community Action in their local community and further afield.

We caught up with them to find out how the organisation supports Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities ‘to tackle and overcome barriers created by structural inequalities’ through grassroots activities and community engagement.

“I started volunteering with Oxford Community Action in August 2020. After I settled into my home, I started going to their Wednesday food distribution operations and became a regular volunteer.

I started off helping to pack up food parcels – we were in the basement of a school and we were packing parcels for close to 300 families. A few months later, I talked to Hassan, one of the leading organisers – he had been looking for someone to take over their social media department. For the last year or so, I’ve been the main person to coordinate social media advertisements, announcements and campaigns. I talk to organisers and think about how we can promote Oxford Community Action on Facebook. 

We used to reach out to people or organisations for support, but through my voluntary social media work we have started to see organisations getting in contact directly and asking if they can join up with us on certain activities. For example, we’ve got connections with Oxford IT Bank, an organisation that picks up laptops from organisations or individuals and drops them off to us at Oxford Community Action to give to families and school children who don’t have access to a laptop at home.

We also have connections with Willow Brook Farm just outside of Oxford, the first Halal and Tayib farm in the UK. They got in touch and we had a family day last summer where we took 80 adults and children to visit the farm. Building connections like these would have been hard before because we didn’t have a social media presence. Anyone who wasn’t friends or directly in touch with us wouldn’t have known about the organisation, but now there’s more knowledge about what we do and more people reach out to us.

There are many personal advantages to my volunteering too. As someone who is in the middle of a PhD I’m really immersed in that process and it’s lovely to have a mid-week break from what I’m doing. It offers me a community to come back to and that was particularly important during times like last winter when I wasn’t seeing many of my friends. 

Volunteering has provided me with a way to connect more with the people around me, and  with people who wouldn’t normally be in my social sphere. A lot of people at Oxford Community Action come from immigrant, working class, BAME backgrounds which, as a middle-class, white student, are different to the people I met at university. It’s allowed me to bridge these gaps and form meaningful connections. 

We’ve done so much work over the last year that has been a pleasure to be part of. Quite early on, we had an online event where we brought together a lot of BAME doctors and nurses to give community members a chance to ask them questions. Government efforts to provide equal access to and information about the vaccines are still sorely insufficient as unequal vaccination uptake data tells us, so to be able to bring together over 100 people to ask questions that they wouldn’t usually be able to ask a doctor or nurse, was an important moment. They could address some of the community’s anxieties and empower them to protect themselves and the people around them. We also recently started an event for BAME mothers, where they can talk about their experiences of maternity.”

To find out more about Oxford Community Action, visit their website. You can also keep up with our #10years celebration where we’re highlighting guardians from the past ten years and the voluntary organisations our guardians give their time to. 

Finding a sense of community in north west London: Farah and The Granville

Queen’s Park guardian, Farah, found a renewed sense of community in her hometown of north west London when she started volunteering for The Granville last year. The centre delivers food parcels to the local community and provides a multi-purpose space for people to come together.

“I had gotten really into gardening during lockdown and was looking to continue when I came across The Granville in May 2021. I started with Granville Community Garden and found out they were also running a foodbank. It runs twice a week, and I thought it was great to be involved as the pandemic made me realise the level of food poverty in the area. It’s also an opportunity to get to know local people.

My main role is helping with food parcels. Lots of the food is donated from local companies that have surplus and they donate in huge quantities. The volunteers go through the donations and divide it up. We make 100-150 parcels per shift and they all go to the local community. I also deliver to those who can’t come to The Granville. It’s nice to walk around the area and get to know it (and it’s good exercise!)

The gardening is connected, it’s been quieter at the moment but I’ve been maintaining the space throughout the summer and we will get started again soon. It’s grown by the community, for the community, and anyone can access it. There’s also an allotment.

It’s been a good way to get to know local people in a way I would not have normally. There’s a real sense of community spirit – everyone helping each other out. It’s taught me a lot and it’s the highlight of my week! 

One of the challenges is seeing face to face the poverty in the area and how many people rely on the foodbank. It’s made me realise also about my own food waste and use.

My favourite moment has been engaging with people when I deliver the food parcels. Often it’s the kids who open the door and it’s a sweet encounter, and they’re really funny and honest.

It’s been lovely having access to inexpensive housing. It has taken a lot of pressure off me, and I can do things like invest in my local community and feel more part of it. I knew the area as I grew up in north west London but now I am really part of it.”

To discover how you can get involved with The Granville,  visit their website.

You can also keep up with our #10Years celebration where we’re highlighting guardians from the past ten years  and the voluntary organisations our guardians give their time to. 

How the Dot Dot Dot team volunteer their time to good causes

To celebrate a decade of being an award-winning social enterprise, we’re telling the stories of our guardians, property owners, the voluntary organisations our guardians give their time to, and the Dot Dot Dot team.

At Dot Dot Dot, we wouldn’t be able to support the volunteering efforts of our guardians without being socially-minded individuals ourselves, willing to dedicate time and energy to good causes. So, we caught up with members of our team to share some of the ways in which they have volunteered to support a wide range of communities in the UK and abroad, from a Chinese community centre in Soho to refugees in Calais.

Anna Scott, New Guardian Assistant

My volunteering story began in 2018 when, motivated by a podcast, I decided to go to Calais to help cook food in the Refugee Community Kitchen. I felt nervous, unsure what to expect. I needn’t have worried, as when I arrived I had that rare but instant feeling that these were my people. 

The atmosphere in the kitchen was fantastic, music blared as we spent hours cutting vegetables and talking about every topic under the sun. If I hadn’t already booked a return ferry, I would have stayed longer! Even now, three years later, I often think of Calais and plan to go back when I can.

Annabel Cleak, Data Coordinator

I volunteered with a Kenyan charity called CIFORD Kenya as part of a training course about the charity sector with Child.org. I worked with CIFORD to conduct research on how gender roles, space, and farming interact in the Meru community, and carried out an impact evaluation of female empowerment workshops for teenage girls.

The data I gathered enabled CIFORD Kenya to gain further funding for their projects. I formed valuable friendships, and felt very fulfilled using my skills to help a charity gain the money they needed to continue work which uplifts the local community.

Mark Muldoon, Relationship Coordinator

I volunteer at all sorts of different places and I’ve always tried to do it in my local community – it feels good to not just live in my neighbourhood but to be playing an active role in it. I’ve been a volunteer event photographer at Poplar HARCA/Poplar Union since August last year and a volunteer painter and decorator at Civic in Custom House every now and then since last May. 

I’ve also been a food waste distributor for OLIO in Poplar since November last year and I’ve volunteered as a litter picker in Limehouse Basin for Moo Canoes. Through OLIO, I solely manage the redistribution of supermarket food that would otherwise be thrown away, ensuring as much of it as possible gets into the hands of less well off families in my local community.

Omar Al-Amin, Business Development Manager

I have volunteered at different stages of my life, and with different charities or projects in different sectors. The one common aspect that cuts through all of the volunteering I’ve done, is the chance to meet new people – the charity or project staff, the other volunteers, the end users / customers, – and the chance to see new places. It usually involves some form of (light) exercise, the chance to be outdoors and to learn new things. In other words, it’s a chance to feel connected. An increasingly rare feeling in the modern world.

Kieran Picton, Relationship Coordinator

London Friend is a charity who support vulnerable members of the LGBT community. I got involved in volunteering for them because I wanted to help people in an immediate sense, to assist those going through a difficult time to understand their situation and improve their self-worth. When the pandemic started my volunteering changed to checking in with members by phone call every week.

Some of the people I speak to suffer from complex PTSD and don’t leave their homes for some weeks, so I might be their only real human interaction.

It’s helped people to feel less alone; they tell me knowing they have someone checking in with them each week gives them something to look forward to. I feel like what I’m doing isn’t significant, but when I’m told things like this, it makes me realise what seems small to me can make a world of difference to someone else. To know I’ve made a positive impact in one person’s life makes it fulfilling for me.

Liz Clarke, Relationship Manager

When I first moved to London, I volunteered in my lunchtime at the Chinese Community Centre in Soho. I would help elderly people at a smartphone workshop and assist them with their use of their touch screen phones, particularly using WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. It highlighted to me the importance of digital inclusion and accessibility, which has become even more important through the pandemic and in a world where we are now often faced with using QR codes (the barcode you might see on a menu, for example). It was rewarding to help people reach out to their families overseas who they had not been able to see or speak to for a long time. I also got to hear the stories behind the connections they wanted to make and the people they wanted to speak to. This was a special way to spend my lunchtimes.

Patrick Harrison, Business Development Associate

I volunteer for my wife Sue’s forest school business, Branching Out-woods, mainly at a primary school in Braintree.

The theory of forest school is that the children choose what to do in the woodland, and the leaders assist them to do those things, which might be den making, craft, cooking, rope stuff, or almost anything in their imagination. There is a big role for risk taking and fires which the children learn to make for themselves. It sounds hippy-ish but the evidence is that it really helps a child’s development (and the adults! – it’s so hard not to give the answer but let the child take (managed) risks and learn from their mistakes). We do see the children change in a few weeks!

After week three of the six allotted sessions we see the children relax into it and make the time their own. When we ask them if they would like to see anything changed, the response is “No, this is our time to do what we want”. It seems many children have so much of their life structured and directed.

Keep up with our #10Years celebration where we’re highlighting the stories of our guardians, property owners, the voluntary organisations our guardians give their time to, and the Dot Dot Dot team.

Delivering food parcels in his community: Daneel Phillips and Made in Hackney

We spoke to Poplar guardian Daneel back in April this year about his volunteering with Made in Hackney, a community cookery school that, when the pandemic hit, turned its hand to supporting vulnerable members of the local community.

We recently caught up with Khin, Volunteer Manager at Made in Hackney, to see how they’ve adapted over the past 18 months and how volunteers like Daneel contribute to the direct impact they are making in their community.

“When Made in Hackney started around nine years ago we were the first fully plant-based cookery school and charity in the UK. When the pandemic hit, we realised that we could offer our support, and that food was more important than ever. People still need meals, especially those who are vulnerable, and we could use our knowledge to run online classes for people at home.

“We crowdfunded like crazy to offer a community meal service, going door to door and delivering vegan meals by bike. We still continue our delivery service today, and meet at the Queen of Hoxton kitchen space each Tuesday and Thursday, where professional chefs cook 1,000 meals each week. Cyclists like Daneel come by at 4 o’clock and deliver to between 150 to 200 households.

“Daneel has done so many hours for us and we’re so grateful to him – he’s a terrific supporter! He’s even running the Hackney half marathon with some of our other volunteers, who are raising money for Made in Hackney.”

Property guardian Daneel has contributed almost 700 hours of volunteering during his time with Dot Dot Dot, with many of these going towards his work with Made in Hackney.

“This is my first time volunteering consistently. I’d been meaning to do it for such a long time and the fact that it’s part of my guardianship is great as it gave me the drive and encouragement I’d been waiting for. Now I know it makes me feel good, improves my mental health and enables me to meet different people.”

Addressing health inequalities and food access in Hackney

Made in Hackney is about more than just food delivery. “Our ethos is really about addressing our community health crisis – on both a local and environmental level – to address issues with health inequalities, food access and climate change. The meals we cook and deliver are all local and sustainable – that’s why we use bicycles, too – and we are lucky enough to get donations from local providers like Edible London and Street Box.

“What we’re hoping for is that more people will be like Daneel and volunteer with us, especially cyclists and people who can come and help out in the kitchen. There’s all kinds of things you can help with, not just cooking – you can help with carrying supplies in or with portioning and packing up meals. We also need volunteers for our cookery school where you can join us as a class assistant. We induct volunteers into our school and teach them about vegan cooking. We are now able to hold our cookery classes in person as well as online at our kitchen in Clapham Common.”

If you’d like to find out how you can get involved in Made in Hackney, check out their volunteering page. If you’re interested in becoming a property guardian, take our short eligibility quiz. 

Spotlight on: Karolina Gerlich – from volunteer to CEO of care workers charity the National Association of Care and Support Workers

Karolina became a Dot Dot Dot guardian in 2017, living in Canning Town, east London. When she wasn’t a full-time care worker, Karolina was spending much of her free time volunteering with the National Association of Care and Support Workers, acting as CEO. Find out from Karolina how guardianship and volunteering enabled her to gain a full-time paid role as the chief executive of the charity she had dedicated her spare time to.

During the first two years of my guardianship with Dot Dot Dot, I was working full time as a care worker. At the same time, I was dedicating a huge amount of time to volunteering as the CEO of the National Association of Care and Support Workers. I was spending much of my time helping to give care workers a voice, representing the workforce and participating in meetings with stakeholders. Ultimately, all of my voluntary work was around championing those in the profession as skilled professionals who make a huge contribution to the economy and to society. 

Being able to dedicate so much of my time to representing care workers with this organisation meant that as of March last year, I was given a full-time paid role as CEO. In my role as chief executive, I run the charity and develop stakeholder relationships and engagement. As care workers are a low-paid workforce, we give out financial grants to to support their wellbeing and mental health – there’s a lack of funding in the sector and so due to many having to self-isolate during the pandemic, there were also a huge amount of care workers were missing out on fair pay. Last year we gave £2.2 million to over 3,200 care workers. 

I first found out about property guardianship in the Evening Standard. When I did my research, Dot Dot Dot stood out from other organisations doing the same thing because of the volunteering element – lower costs combined with volunteering was an idea I could really get behind. Other companies seemed to prioritise profit over people, but at Dot Dot Dot, they’re much more focused on doing the right thing and putting their guardians first. 

I viewed a 2-bed property in east London that I ended up moving into – there was lots of space and the value was unbeatable for London. If I’d wanted to privately rent somewhere of the same size, it would have cost me double the amount. I ended up being a guardian for almost three years, which was an overall positive experience for me as it meant that I was able to use my money more wisely rather than most of it going towards living expenses. If I was looking for affordable housing in the future, I’d definitely look to live with Dot Dot Dot again.

Read more stories from our 10 great guardians who we’re highlighting as part of our tenth birthday celebrations. 

Social impact worth millions

Volunteering has always been at the core of what Dot Dot Dot does – our mission is to provide housing that makes it easier for people to do more good, and we do that by housing people who want to give time to good causes as property guardians.  So as we celebrate 10 years since we launched, we have counted up how much volunteering we have enabled during our first decade – and it’s a lot.  

The value of Dot Dot Dot guardians’ volunteering

Collectively, our guardians have given time worth £4.3m to good causes since 2011 – the equivalent of one person working full-time for more than 200 years.  But a good deal of that volunteering happens because our guardians are kind people who want to make a difference, and would do so whether or not they were housed by Dot Dot Dot.  

So how much more volunteering have we caused to happen, beyond what would have happened anyway? We have dug into the numbers and worked out that £1.8m of the value of the time guardians have given to charity is directly due to our efforts.

How we worked it out

We took two steps to arrive at this value.  First, we discounted the amount of volunteering our residents were doing before they joined us – so if, for example, someone went from volunteering 12 hours a month to 16 hours a month we only counted four hours for that person.  We found that, on average, 67% of our guardians’ volunteering was additional to what they had been doing before we housed them.

Then second we accounted for other factors which caused residents to volunteer more after they joined us – for instance, some people joined us because they knew they were going to start volunteering more as they went through a career change, so in these cases their extra volunteering wasn’t due to our work, and we didn’t count it as a difference we had made.  Overall, we found that 62% of the increase in our guardians’ volunteering was due to being housed by us.  You can read more about the data and calculations we used to arrive at these numbers here.

We’re glad that not all of our guardians’ volunteering is due to our work

These results tally with the way we see our role.  It would be worrying if all the volunteering our guardians did was due to us – we work hard to house people who actively want to volunteer, rather than to convert people who would rather not do it.  This is because if we were compelling unwilling people to give time to charity they probably wouldn’t give their best effort.  

By contrast, people who find a cause they care about and work that is intrinsically motivating will naturally try harder and be more committed.  The volunteers will benefit from it more themselves, too, through learning, friendships and increased wellbeing.  And our jobs at Dot Dot Dot are more enjoyable when we are supporting and encouraging people to do volunteering they believe in, rather than nagging them to do something they don’t really care about.  

So it is reassuring that 58% of our guardians’ volunteering is happening for reasons other than our work – it means that our recruitment process is working, and that people who would like to be property guardians but who would prefer not to volunteer are choosing to be housed by our competitors.

But we’re also glad to be moving the needle

But it would also be worrying if our work made no difference.  Our vision is of a society where people have the time and energy to give back to causes they care about, and we believe that providing our guardians with well-managed, inexpensive housing frees up both their time and their energy to get involved.  

It gives them more time because not having to pay high rent can enable them to work fewer hours, or they can live closer to their jobs and therefore cut down on commuting time.  It gives them more energy because it reduces anxieties linked to financial hardship and unsafe or unsuitable housing, and means that people are in a better place emotionally to think about contributing to a cause.  So we are glad to see that our work is making a meaningful difference to guardians’ volunteering.

The bigger picture

Supporting volunteering is only one of the ways in which we make a difference as a social enterprise.  We also have a positive impact by creating inexpensive, well-managed housing at a time of housing crisis, by preventing empty buildings from blighting neighbourhoods and by being active contributors to the growth of social enterprise as a sector.  

But since we have had volunteering in our DNA since day one, it’s great to know that our guardians have given such a lot of value to good causes over the past ten years, and we’re very glad that we were able to enable them to do even more.  We look forward to housing and supporting even more generous, motivated people in our next decade.

Read more about our social impact and contributions to the charity sector.

The value of Dot Dot Dot’s social impact over the past 10 years: How we calculated it

In June, Dot Dot Dot celebrated its 10th birthday, and August marked a decade since we housed our first guardian.

We’ve worked out the total value of our guardians’ volunteering over the past 10 years is £4.3m and the value of the impact Dot Dot Dot has made is £1.8m. These two figures make us very proud, but how did we get to them?

The value of all our guardians’ volunteering

In the 10 years up to June 2021, our guardians volunteered a total of 339,058 hours, and 77.7% of those hours were volunteered by guardians living in London.

We use the National and London Living Wages as the basis for calculating the value of each hour volunteered. Aside from the fact it’s good practice and Dot Dot Dot is a Living Wage Employer, those wages are equivalent to that paid for entry-level roles in charities, and we think it’s reasonable to assume a majority of our guardians are undertaking work of at least this value.

If our guardians were working and not volunteering for free, then their employers would be paying costs associated with employing people e.g. National Insurance, pension, sick pay contributions, and a good rule of thumb is that these add a further 30% to a salary. So, we:

1. Broke down all our volunteering by the year in which it occurred
2. Assumed in each of those years 77.7% of the volunteering was done in London
3. Worked out the London and National Living Wage rates plus 30% on-costs for each year
4. Calculated an hourly wage for both London and non-London based volunteering weighted across the 10 years we were looking at.
5. Multiplied those weighted hourly wages by the number of hours volunteered in and out of London over 10 years

↓

Value of London volunteering (263.448 x £13.09) + Value of out-of-London volunteering (75,610 x £11.31) = Value of all Dot Dot Dot guardians’ volunteering: £4.3m

Working out our social impact

We are very proud that the total value of our guardians’ volunteering was £4.3m over the past decade. However, we really wanted to understand the impact that Dot Dot Dot had made in 10 years i.e. what was the value of the volunteering that only happened because guardians were housed by us.

To do this we needed to get some data from our historic and current guardians to calculate:

Hours volunteered x monetary value of those hours x %age of volunteering at Dot Dot Dot which was/is additional to any they did before being housed by us x %age of volunteering at Dot Dot Dot which was/is attributable to being housed by Dot Dot Dot

To make this as robust as possible we needed data from a representative sample of guardians – we needed to be confident that not just the people who volunteered a high number of hours had responded. So:

1. We asked all current guardians to tell us how many hours they volunteered in the the couple of months before joining Dot Dot Dot – in order to compare the difference between the hours they now volunteer
2. We also asked them how important a factor being housed by Dot Dot Dot was in any extra volunteering they did
3. We asked all former guardians the same two questions

We compared the average hours volunteered by current guardians with those of former guardians, and found them to be very similar, within a couple of percentage points. Fundamentally, we were confident in the representativeness of our sample.

Now we needed to look at the additionality and attribution points, and calculated that:

• 66.85% of volunteering was additional
• 62% of that additional volunteering was due to people being housed by Dot Dot Dot

We received replies from enough people to give us a strong confidence level of 95% with a confidence interval of 5.5% in their answers. So, for example, for the numbers above, we were 95% confident that, if every guardian had responded to our survey, then between 61.35% and 72.35% (66.85% ± 5.5%) of their volunteering was additional.

Which meant we could do our calculation, and found the value of the impact Dot Dot Dot has made in support of charitable causes in its 10-year history is £1.8m.

Read more about the value of our social impact over the past 10 years.

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