The Importance of Volunteers on Small Charities
How volunteers can help
Volunteers can help charities in so many ways, such as: Supporting a service directly (e.g. Helping on our Sibling Support Service days), Donating space (e.g. Supplying a charity with office/storage space), Supporting events (e.g. Our TMD marathon volunteers help to keep everything running smooth on race day), Office volunteering (e.g. Helping with office admin, assisting with wish delivery) and so much more! Every volunteer helps a charity to run at its best, whilst making sure more of every donation goes towards services.
Why Volunteer?
Volunteering has been down year on year, “In 2021/22, 27% of respondents reported taking part in formal volunteering at least once in the last year (approximately 12 million people in England). This is lower than 2020/21 (30%, approximately 14 million people) and lower than rates between 2013/14 and 2019/20 (between 36% to 45%)” (gov.uk, 2023). With less volunteers, charities aren’t able to operate at their best, and services/events have to be scaled back. Volunteering today can enable charities to keep their services at 100% and even expand to help more families in the community.
How can volunteers help to expand or increase the quality of a smaller charity? Because volunteers bring in new knowledge and expertise! Small charities will have less staff than their larger counterparts, to keep operating costs at a minimum, therefore they have only the expertise in needed areas to run the charity. A great example of this, is Taylor-Made Dreams’ technology loan library. In 2021, TMD setup the Technology Loan Library, to give TMD families the ability to have interactive learning at home, through specialised equipment for children with limited mobility. The technology provided can be expensive, therefore it would be hard to expand this service with a paid employee overseeing the service. This is where volunteering makes a huge difference, as it gives the ability to help expand the TLL without the overheads of a larger charity. Their expertise makes sure the equipment is suitable for our TMD families by working/having connections in this field, whilst also allowing us to buy the best equipment for our families needs at prices that are affordable for a small charity.
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TMD Volunteer spotlights
We have so many great volunteers, that make providing our services possible. Clare Armstrong, Tracey Easton and Neil Long are 3 of our long-standing volunteers, who keep TMD and its services running smoothly. Clare provides financial and wish delivery support, Tracey provides office/storage and wish delivery support and Neil provides business and event support. All of these contributions help to make sure wishes go out on time and are funded.
There are many more volunteers that help to make TMD a possibility and we truly couldn’t do what we do without all of our volunteers. Every minute of time you donate makes a difference and helps to improve the lives of families in your community. Thank you to our TMD volunteers.
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