Volunteer Insight

The following research has been carried out by students from the School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences at The University of Birmingham. Sport Birmingham support community organisations and sporting events across the city, with the recruitment, training and deployment of volunteers.

The aim of the research was to explore future strategies for engaging volunteers and identify opportunities for organisations, events and sectors to collaborate on deployment and retention.

The video below highlights the findings of the research.

Retention

Volunteers are fundamental to society as many organisations rely on their time and efforts to be successful. This research is in collaboration with Sport Birmingham.

Sport Birmingham identified that improving retention practices could help remove strains that NPOs are often subject to. This including a lack of funding, which is often subsequently spent on recruitment and training of new volunteers.

Transfer

In 2017/18, 20.1 million people volunteered in the UK, highlighting the large-scale of volunteering. Sport Birmingham identified this as an opportunity to explore how volunteers could transfer across the community, cultural and sport sectors, discussed as volunteer transfer. However, a limited understanding of the benefits and ways to promote volunteer transfer provides scope for this project, to explore the desirability and feasibility of volunteer transfer in Birmingham.