Looking back at a record-breaking year

Graph showing an increase in Reach placements since 2019
Janet Thorne
Chief Executive at Reach Volunteering

This month, the Reach team has been taking stock of our impact in the last year. 

The release of our impact report for 2023 signals a moment for us to pause and reflect on the building momentum for change through skills-based volunteering.  In 2023 we saw a record-breaking number of volunteers sign up to our platform and placed the highest number of volunteers and trustees ever in one year. 

We’ve estimated that in 2023 our volunteers and trustees created a whopping £55 million pounds' worth of value for civil society. 

While this gives us much to celebrate, it is also significant, given that volunteering rates in society are down overall. In contrast, we have experienced an enormous and sustained surge in people signing up to volunteer – over 13,000 new volunteers last year, which is three times the pre-pandemic numbers. We don’t yet fully understand these trends, but they do indicate that the desire to volunteer is as strong as ever. It is encouraging that so many people are willing to share their expertise, for free, to help create a fairer and more sustainable world. 

These growing numbers are so hopeful - and hope is so important right now: there are so many big challenges in the world, and we see so little good news.  

It was heartening to see our #VolunteerForClimate campaign inspire more than 2,000 people to sign up to our platform, concerned for the future of our planet and keen to explore opportunities to volunteer for climate-focussed organisations. 

Understanding and seeing this real evidence every week of people’s good nature is incredibly inspiring. 

We are going to be needing this spirit of generosity, care and compassion, more and more, in the future. We need to build our ability to work collectively to shape a better society, and skills-based volunteering opens up important opportunities for more people to do just this.  

Ours is a collective success and a hopeful indication for the future. We hope you’ll join us and take this moment to celebrate all the good that has been done and progress made in the last year through skills-based volunteering. 

Explore more facts, stats and case studies in our impact report.

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