2 December 2020 | News and features, Our social impact, Volunteering | Back to Blog
Volunteering: Once you pop, you can’t stop
From our founder, Katharine Hibbert
“Thank you for the diligent chivvying”
Perhaps it’s a surprising thank-you note to feel particularly good about, but one of the most cheering emails I’ve had from a Dot Dot Dot guardian was to let us know that his experience with us had changed his mind about volunteering.
He had moved into one of our homes prepared to volunteer for a good cause because he understood that it was part of our model, but he wasn’t very enthusiastic about it. He had chosen to become a property guardian with us because we had nice flats at a good price in the right place for him, and because of our reputation for fairness and thoroughness. He didn’t mind volunteering for the 16 hours a month we expected, but he wasn’t particularly excited about our vision of a society where people have the time and energy to give back to causes they care about.
But by the time he moved on from our housing, volunteering had become part of his life, and he carried on after he left – so he emailed me to say thanks for the accountability we’d created for him while he got going.
A survey to make us smile
This man’s email was unusual, but his journey wasn’t. We recently surveyed our guardians, and of the nearly 100 people who replied, 98% of them said they plan to carry on volunteering after they leave our housing, even though nearly half didn’t volunteer before they joined us. These responses are encouraging, since enabling people to get involved in good causes and supporting them to become lifelong volunteers is central to our purpose.
Two thirds of the guardians said they plan to carry on doing the same amount of volunteering or more than they have done while living with us, which means continuing to give at least half a day a week to a good cause, a significant commitment. And two thirds of them volunteered within the borough where they live, meaning that our work has a directly positive effect on the local areas where we operate.
Of the 55% of guardians who volunteered before they joined us, more than half now do more volunteering than before. Only 4% of guardians surveyed volunteer less than they did before they were housed with us.
A majority also replied that they experienced no down-sides to volunteering – although three in ten said they found it difficult to make time for it. Covid-19 has also forced four in every five of our guardians to update their approach to volunteering – 11% now volunteer with a different organisation, 13% have moved their volunteering online and, for 21%, the venue in which they used to volunteer is currently closed. Around a quarter are currently volunteering for less time than they did before the lockdown, while 10% are volunteering more.
When we asked guardians what benefits they experienced from their volunteering, the most frequent responses included the feeling of making a difference, appreciating the roots it gave them in their communities, the fact that it gives them more empathy with people in need, and their own improved mental health and wellbeing.
Giving a helping hand…to form a lifelong habit
These results – and feedback like that quoted above – are very important to us at Dot Dot Dot. We are not here to press-gang people into doing something they would prefer to avoid. We aim to attract and house people who want to volunteer and who would like a solution like ours to lower the barriers to doing so, and perhaps a bit of encouragement to actually crack on and do it.
We’re very clear with applicants for our housing that if they’d prefer not to volunteer, they’ll be better off with one of the other property guardian companies in the market – and in this respect it’s fortunate that the other providers don’t expect their guardians to help good causes. We understand that not everyone has the time and inclination to volunteer, and that’s totally fine – it’s just that we exist for those who do. So it’s great to see that our guardians are committed enough to their volunteering to continue beyond their time with us.
Our experience is that once people get involved with charities and projects that they care about, and once they are using their skills effectively alongside people they’ve got to know and like, the satisfaction and benefits of volunteering create their own momentum. So even if getting involved is a bit of a chore at the beginning, it quickly becomes worthwhile in its own right. And those who didn’t volunteer previously are much more likely to report that volunteering has given them new skills they can use professionally and greater satisfaction. We’re glad this means that we’re helping our guardians to improve their own lives, as well as encouraging them to help others.
We’ve thought hard about the ways in which we can help to make volunteering as rewarding as possible for the guardians themselves, as well as impactful for the charities they help. At its simplest, we aim to help people to find more time to volunteer by lowering their cost of living and providing homes in areas they couldn’t otherwise afford. Many of those locked in the private rented sector have to work for longer or commute further than they ideally would, and the pressure saps their energy and enthusiasm for giving back. Reducing the burden of housing costs frees them up to do things they would like to do but previously couldn’t.
On top of this, we find that by creating an environment where being a good neighbour and giving time to good causes is the norm, getting involved feels natural. And the fact that we send round volunteering opportunities and check how all our guardians’ volunteering is going every month creates accountability.
We think of this aspect of our work as being similar to the role of a personal trainer in a gym. Even if you know that exercising is good for you, getting started can be hard work and you may need a bit of outside help to get you to actually do it. It’s not that the personal trainer forces you to do anything you don’t want to, they just reduce the amount of willpower you need to exert to get it done. We hope that our contact with guardians about their volunteering does a similar job for them, in encouraging them to do something they would like to do anyway.
So while we’re very glad we’re able to support our guardians to collectively give thousands of hours to good causes every month, credit for the effort should go to the guardians themselves – they’ve found the charities they want to help and the roles they want to do, and they’re going to continue into the future. We’re happy we’ve been able to provide some help along that journey.
