Coronavirus (COVID-19) volunteering - third sector perspectives: survey report

6 Challenges for volunteering during the pandemic – and how organisations have responded

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed many different challenges to organisations working with volunteers, particularly for organisations that had pre-existing formal volunteering programmes in place before the pandemic. We asked volunteer-involving organisations to tell us about the impact of the pandemic on their volunteering programmes and projects; the challenges they have faced in deploying volunteers during the pandemic; and how they have responded to these challenges by adapting the way that they work to enable volunteering to continue.

We also asked infrastructure organisations for their views on the challenges that the pandemic has posed for volunteering, and present their views in the final section of this chapter.

6.1 Impact of COVID-19 on volunteering programmes and projects

We asked VIOs to tell us about the overall impact of the pandemic on their programmes and projects involving volunteers, and whether any of these were reduced in scale, paused or ceased permanently. The results are provided in Figure 6.1 below. Twelve percent of the responding VIOs told us that programmes involving volunteers had ceased permanently. Sixty-one percent said that they had had to pause projects or programmes involving volunteers temporarily, and 31% indicated the projects or programmes involving volunteers had reduced in scale. Just 18% of responding VIOs said that the pandemic had had no impact on their programmes and projects involving volunteers. The data suggest that pre-existing volunteering programmes have been significantly affected by the pandemic with all sectors and sizes of organisations experiencing significant reductions in their ability to run their planned volunteering programmes.

Programmes and activities requiring face-to-face engagement were the main type of projects involving volunteers that had reduced, paused or ceased during COVID-19.

'Our face-to-face engagement with communities has had to cease and everything has gone online.'

'During lockdown all our properties had to close meaning that projects were either paused, scaled down or transferred into next year.'

'Restrictions on public gatherings, meeting indoors and travel within different local authorities have resulted in the suspension of fortnightly sessions and all volunteering opportunities.'

'Programme moved online with home delivery. Uptake was low, so effectively was temporarily suspended. Volunteers not able to engage – lack of technology, lack of technical skills, changed priorities (work and family), loss of interest.'

'Participation groups with young people had to stop completely during most of the lockdowns, which was the majority of our volunteering work. Volunteers were very supportive and understanding, and many stepped forward to help with online participation. However, many young people did not take to online groups and so volunteers weren't required in the same numbers, or often groups were cancelled when there was no interest.'

One organisation which suspended its programme also noted how their formal volunteers switched to informal and mutual aid volunteering instead.

'As a community hub our doors were closed to the public and many of our volunteers. Prior to COVID-19 they would have been involved in the design and delivery of large-scale community events which were then suspended due to the pandemic. Many volunteers needed to focus on parenting responsibilities. The focus shifted from formal volunteering to mutual aid through a food delivery programme and also informal volunteering in their own street; checking on neighbours, cutting grass, etc.'

6.1.1 Impacts on volunteers

Nearly half of respondents provided some degree of reflection as to how volunteers had been impacted as a result of projects and programmes being reduced, paused or stopped. The vast majority believed that volunteers had been adversely affected; either through there being a lack of opportunities to volunteer, or through personal concerns as to how safe and appropriate it was to volunteer.

'Volunteers were impacted as the demand for their time reduced. Many volunteers are still reluctant to come into face-to-face settings.'

'The stay-at-home restrictions meant that volunteers could not be encouraged to travel other than for essential reasons. Rules around social contacts also meant that it was impossible for volunteers to be supervised or work with other volunteers.'

For most respondents, COVID-19 restrictions had significantly reduced or halted their volunteering activities, providing fewer opportunities for people to volunteer and to form social connections and engage in meaningful activity. Although many VIOs attempted to diversify and provide alternative forms of volunteering, including through digital engagement and delivery, it was not always possible to continue offering volunteering opportunities.

'We have also had to reduce the number of volunteers coming into the food bank on a daily basis to ensure safe social distancing could be enforced. This has been difficult on volunteers but we have actively engaged them in other more social activities such as wellbeing walks and online meetings to maintain contact.'

'From March 2020 when green space volunteering, community development and health and wellbeing activities were paused our volunteers instead delivered emergency food relief initially and later youth work due to a very poor response to both from the local authority. The impact on our volunteers of taking on a whole other range of support services was huge, the resilience work did not feel voluntary, it felt like we were filling a gap to prevent vulnerable households from being overwhelmed.'

'We lost the majority of our volunteers during lockdown, many felt they simply didn't have the digital skills or confidence to deliver remote service. Factors including lack of hardware to bring in digitally confident volunteers was another factor limiting volunteer participation in front line advice. Many volunteers working remotely are using their own hardware (pc/laptop/mobile device) to provide remote services. A great number of volunteers came to the [respondent VIO] to be part of a team, to beat loneliness and to keep active, working from home did not provide them with the familiar interactions they were accustomed to, this meant they didn't feel any personal benefit to their own wellbeing working from home, coupled with handling clients in crisis on a daily basis with no outlet, had a significant impact on their mental health and they decided to give volunteering with us a break. Caring responsibilities saw another portion of volunteers leaving, this including caring for children and family/friends.'

A number of respondents referred to people's 'readiness to volunteer' and how some volunteers were reluctant to return because of safety concerns regarding COVID-19 or had had to reduce or stop volunteering because of changes in their circumstances brought about by the pandemic (i.e. increased caring responsibilities or other commitments).

'I would imagine that some of our retired volunteers may not wish to return with the added consideration of PPE/guidelines, etc.'

'Some volunteers are on hold either due to increased commitments outside volunteering or because they have chosen not to do remote support.'

'Some of our volunteer counsellors were not able to provide remote counselling due to their home circumstances (e.g. children home schooling, partners working from home, etc.) and not having a private enough space. Others were struggling with personal issues which precluded their volunteering.'

'Many of our volunteers are also older and have experienced…increased isolation and lack of confidence, increased issues with mobility. This has put some off from returning to volunteering. There is also the element of losing the connection with the charity and with the group. As our…volunteers have not met in over a year, it might be difficult to rebuild the team dynamic we had through them meeting regularly.'

'Our social groups, drama groups and music groups have been unable to come into the church to meet because of COVID restrictions. The volunteers who facilitated these are shielding in some instances, in other instances report a reluctance to come out and a detrimental effect on mental health, in some older volunteers – no longer willing to come out … – "it's too cold", "too much of an effort to get dressed and make my way there", "don't know where a stranger has been - they might give me COVID".'

Some volunteering organisations felt that the lack of opportunity to engage in their usual volunteering activities as a result of volunteering programmes closing or reducing had negatively impacted on the health and wellbeing of some volunteers. A number of VIOs expressed concern that for more vulnerable volunteers, the pandemic had led to an increase in 'loneliness and isolation, loss of purpose and poor mental health', and in some instances supporting the wellbeing of volunteers had now become a major focus for the organisations.

'Our volunteers struggled with the fact they couldn't help families who they had a trusted relationship with.'

'Many people choose to volunteer as they themselves are isolated and the personal gain they get from volunteering, so being unable to do so has had a detrimental impact on their wellbeing.'

'We shifted to supporting our volunteers (and participants) as people in a pandemic and worked to alleviate isolation, loneliness [and] wellbeing issues by offering alternative ways to engage with us and each other at home or online.'

'We provided a huge amount of support to our volunteers throughout this time, as they too were grappling with the stress and fear of the pandemic and needed support too. And then in turn the support needed for our staff supporting the volunteers.'

'Reasons for volunteering has shifted in emphasis, from giving something back/supporting others to supporting their own wellbeing. People have felt isolated during lockdowns, and any volunteering opportunities that they engaged in pre-COVID, have been suspended, if they took place indoors. Our own emphasis, as an organisation, has shifted from seeing our volunteers as a support for our delivery of services, to us supporting the wellbeing of our volunteers, who in turn then support the community.'

6.1.2 Impacts on service users

Around a quarter of respondents briefly mentioned how they believed service users had been impacted by their projects/programmes involving volunteers being reduced, paused or ceased during COVID-19. The majority of these respondents believed that service users had been adversely affected; either through not being able to access services due to closures, delays and restrictions; or through increased loneliness and isolation stemming from a lack of social interaction that was once provided by these paused or reduced services.

'The impact of pausing groups has meant some service users have become more isolated and now lack confidence going out.'

'Youth club had to be postponed due to hall closures and social distancing requirements. Young people were tired of online activities and did not want to engage in digital youth club.'

'Our core work is matching volunteers with families. These volunteers provide support through home-visiting. This had to completely stop during both lockdowns although remote support was provided. This had a devastating effect on our families who were already struggling with their physical and mental health.'

Although many organisations had adapted their programmes to be able to deliver on-line or remote support, this was not always meeting the needs of service users. Certain groups of service users found the shift to online provision particularly challenging: respondents mentioned people with poor internet access; refugees; people with dementia; some people with disabilities. Organisations working with children and young people struggled to engage these groups effectively with on-line provision.

'All of our face-to-face befriending meetings have had to stop which our befriendees and volunteer befrienders have found really hard. We have also had to stop all of our group sessions – these were really valued by everyone involved. We have moved all of our befriending relationships onto telephone befriending/video calls and have offered some shared interest Zoom groups as a temporary measure, but some people have not been able to do this due to hearing problems or lack of access to the internet.'

'Many roles were for our outdoor sports groups, like walking, swimming or the community garden and these had to stop. Others were moved online but many volunteers decided online groups were too much with Zoom fatigue after a while. We used to run several activities and ESOL classes on a drop in basis and our office was a hub with many activities and conversation groups where volunteers and participants could just drop in. We were able to continue doing these online but the number of classes was reduced drastically. The whole nature of drop in services disappeared due to Covid guidelines. We were able to transfer our whole befriending programme to be done remotely. This worked well but only to an extent since all the families and individuals we befriend are newcomers to Edinburgh and the majority are from the refugee community so communicating online when English is not your first language was not easy. Many refugee families also did not have access to internet or computers. Many volunteers preferred the face to face befriending and conversation groups.'

'Reduced number of service users due to struggling with online, lack of equipment and zoom fatigue. It is hard to build trusted adult relationships with young people just using online methods.'

'Participation groups with young people had to stop completely during most of the lockdowns, which was the majority of our volunteering work. Volunteers were very supportive and understanding, and many stepped forward to help with online participation. However, many young people did not take to online groups and so volunteers weren't required in the same numbers, or often groups were cancelled when there was no interest.'

'We moved our befriending to telephone befriending. This has impacted our service users, especially those with dementia.'

In terms of respondents' expectations about whether their projects/programmes involving volunteers would restart, a majority of the respondents who provided text comments indicated that their work had already resumed, or they were expecting it to resume in the near future, subject to COVID-19 rules and regulations. In many cases, this resumption was gradual.

6.2 Challenges faced by organisations deploying volunteers

We asked volunteer-involving organisations to tell us more about the specific challenges that they faced in deploying volunteers during the pandemic. As shown in Figure 6.2, organisations told us that the most significant challenges they faced were due to volunteers not being able to volunteer as a result of social distancing measures (87% of organisations said this was either a 'major' challenge or 'some' challenge), and a reduction in the participation of existing volunteers because of the risks of COVID-19 (80% of organisations said this was either a 'major' challenge or 'some' challenge). Around 49% of organisations said that adapting their volunteering work to meet COVID-19 requirements was a challenge to at least some degree.

Volunteers having insufficient digital skills or confidence to volunteer remotely was a 'major' or 'some' challenge to 58% of organisations. Organisations also found it challenging to bring new volunteers into their organisations during the pandemic, due to the need for remote training and support. Areas of slightly lower concern overall included staff capacity to support volunteers, and the availability of equipment, support and staff capacity to support remote volunteering. Organisations expressed least concern overall about the volunteer supply, with around 33% suggesting that the need for more volunteers to meet the new needs of a pandemic was a challenge, and 55% saying this was not a challenge.

Around 47% of organisations considered that volunteer wellbeing, fatigue or burn-out was either a 'major' or 'some' challenge. This was also mentioned in several of the open comments, summarized in section 6.2.3 below. A similar proportion of organisations were experiencing challenges to ensure that their volunteering deployment was inclusive.

6.2.1 Barriers to volunteering during the pandemic

In the text responses, more than half of VIOs described either not having enough volunteers to help with service delivery due to the 'fallout' of the pandemic and its associated restrictions; or not having enough opportunities for existing and potential new volunteers to engage with the organisation – this was particularly a concern for organisations working in areas requiring high levels of safeguarding vetting for volunteers.

'We had difficulty recruiting new volunteers as we did not have the capacity to adapt our training to online. We want to physically meet new volunteers who will have a role with vulnerable children and young people.'

'Many of our volunteers were older men and women and a significant number of them have decided not to return to their volunteering roles. We have been able to recruit a few new volunteers but we are still not at full capacity. We are planning to run a recruitment campaign over the next few months.'

'We had new volunteers requesting opportunities in the evening and weekends, where we had no opportunities available. We are concerned that increased numbers of people who may have never volunteered before might have been put off as their first exploration into volunteering was met with barriers. Equally, new volunteers that did start with us told us of how difficult it was to find somewhere as organisations often just didn't get back to them. This isn't helpful in trying to create a culture of volunteering in Scotland.'

COVID-19 restrictions and closures had made it difficult to deploy volunteers for more than half of respondents.

'As we deal mostly with the vulnerable elderly our premises have been closed since March 2020 so most of our volunteers are not required.'

'As we organised actual face to face events, the pandemic has meant that we simply were not able to hold them. We have been encouraging, educating, informing and inspiring volunteers online to get active individually.'

'Our main difficulty was that volunteers were advised not to car share and therefore the majority of our volunteer drivers were not happy to volunteer. We provided PPE and advice on precautions to be taken which encouraged some of our volunteers to be deployed for essential journeys.'

'As a museum our volunteering opportunities have always been people facing roles with visitors, schools, care homes, etc. As a result all our activities stopped when we went into lockdown in March 2020 and the building closed. …Also with staff on furlough no one could manage volunteers and offer online/virtual opportunities. …We hope to reopen in late May but a new challenge is that many of our volunteers are now volunteering elsewhere or do not want to come back.'

6.2.2 Challenges in following and implementing COVID-19 guidance

Several VIOs also felt there was a lack of information and consistent communication and implementation regarding COVID-19 regulations relating to their activities and what these meant in practice. This tended to make adapting programmes and volunteer activities so that they could continue more difficult:

'One of the biggest challenges was finding rules and guidelines [regarding] COVID that related specifically to community groups and community buildings. Organisations have to be particularly careful about volunteers, but it was very hard to find out information, e.g. our local authority "banned" our gardening group from working around the village socially distanced, yet we could see other groups on [Facebook] working away quite happily and sensibly.'

'Understandably it was difficult to work out what volunteers could and couldn't do initially. Some sector specific guidance had not been worked out yet. We had to spend a lot of time working this out for ourselves. We had to look at various [pieces of] guidance and cross check everything. Volunteer Scotland were amazing in providing support and webinars to work through this and share learning / experience. Local TSIs were also brilliant in setting up support services so we could direct people there to help. SCVO later began sharing how other orgs were doing things differently. Sometimes it was hard to find out who was doing what and building collaboration. It got better though. Third sector organisations are always some of the first sectors to respond to a crisis – we appreciate that this has been acknowledged but I wonder how many third sector orgs/intermediaries were involved in setting some of the guidance and if [it] could work in practice. However, the response has been fantastic in difficult circumstances...'

6.2.3 Volunteer welfare

Organisations talked about the challenges of maintaining volunteer welfare, mental health and wellbeing, and responding to fatigue. The additional challenges of adapting, changing and sometimes intensifying the activities that volunteers undertook also had an impact on volunteer wellbeing in some cases:

'Like many other organisations, we are responding to the general challenges as a result of the pandemic including volunteer fatigue and concerns around safety.'

'We normally support our volunteers in a number of ways that are face to face delivered. We had to adapt quickly, e.g. our 'annual volunteer festival' was on-line last year. However, given that we are a charity that deals with disability, it was noticeable that many of our volunteers and also participants struggled both with isolation and mental health. The lack of ability to get out of the house due to restrictions also exacerbated physical health.'

'As other services have not been running, my volunteers have not been receiving ongoing care, so their health has deteriorated. Also, their mental health has had a big impact to the point one of my volunteers had to be sectioned, so they will not return to us.'

'From March 2020 when green space volunteering, community development and health and wellbeing activities were paused our volunteers instead delivered emergency food relief initially and later youth work. …The impact on our volunteers of taking on a whole other range of support services was huge, the resilience work did not feel voluntary, it felt like we were filling a gap to prevent vulnerable households from being overwhelmed.'

6.2.4 Digital exclusion

Whilst the option of being able to adapt and move to remote working and digital engagement for volunteers and service users was a lifeline for many organisations, respondents also described how this generated challenges and exclusion within their volunteering programmes. The major challenges related to: lack of devices or data for volunteers (and service users); poor internet connections and broadband – in rural areas in particular; the inability to offer all aspects of training remotely; and the lack of interaction with other staff and volunteers that working remotely entailed. Certain groups of volunteers were particularly likely to be excluded as a result of the shift to digital and remote volunteering.

'Inequality in access to digital devices and data was a major barrier to volunteering in the pandemic for our volunteers.'

'Training has had challenges as some things are much more difficult to teach online, and when you are not working beside someone to ask all the little questions that come to mind it can take longer.'

'Our volunteer training has moved online but there is a significant 'practice' part that involves shadowing that can't move online and is a challenge. …We do not have a solution to this challenge yet.'

'Challenges for [home] based volunteers has meant we've not been able to fully immerse volunteers into [our] work…i.e. when working remotely they've met our team virtually but haven't met most of the…team and don't get that daily interaction with other…employees and volunteers, being involved in conversations happening in the office, etc. We've created virtual spaces for volunteers to mix and meet other team members but everyone is starting to suffer from zoom fatigue.'

'Having no access to the premises meant that no training of new volunteers could take place and a visually impaired member was unable to produce programmes at home.'

6.3 How organisations responded to the challenges

Organisations responded in many different ways to the challenges of deploying volunteers during COVID-19.

As shown in Figure 6.3, 65% of VIOs responded by reducing their volunteering activities in reflection of the fact that they were not able to deliver their intended programme due to the constraints of lockdown and ensuring COVID-safety for volunteers and service users.

Organisations also implemented rapid and radical changes and adaptations designed to enable volunteering to continue in the light of COVID restrictions. The most frequent change that organisations said they made was adapting their ways of working to implement a COVID-safe volunteering environment, with 65% of responding VIOs saying they did this. Fifty-one percent also said they made adaptations to ensure that volunteering would be COVID-safe for service users.

Many organisations said that they made changes to the modality and types of volunteer activities that their organisation supported, with the primary focus being to enable remote and online forms of volunteering. Fifty-six percent of organisations moved some or all of their volunteering activity online; 52% changed or refocused the types of activities that their volunteers do; and 44% enabled volunteers who were shielding to undertake alternative volunteering activities from home. Providing remote training for existing and new volunteers was another important adaptation.

Forty-two percent of organisations said that they responded to the challenges by providing mental health or wellbeing support to their volunteers.

Notably, some 17% of responding organisations indicated that they successfully advocated for the volunteers to be considered as key workers in order to enable their essential work to continue during the pandemic.

6.3.1 Insights into how volunteer-involving organisations adapted their work

Respondents told us about how they had adapted their ways of working to try and respond to the challenges of deploying volunteers during the pandemic. Their responses reflect the many rapid and radical adaptations adopted across the sector to enable essential work to continue.

Adapting services in line with COVID-19 restrictions

Many organisations spoke about harnessing the expertise of volunteers to help them work out how to maintain and adapt their services to be in line with COVID restrictions.

'We were lucky to have the expertise in our 100% volunteer group and the connections to work out how to run a service under COVID-19 restrictions.'

'We were fortunate that all our volunteers were adaptable, flexible and able to move online quickly. Also they are used to working in strategic areas and were able to support and test new guidance, new services and digital accessibility.'

'Reacting quickly, this had never been done before, we pulled teams together from across the organisation and took an 'all hands on deck' approach to amend services and volunteer roles. Challenge of managing the expectations and needs of volunteers and service users during an uncertain time. Providing the infrastructure, resources and equipment for new and different ways of working, including IT availability and accessibility for volunteers in some geographical areas. Delivery of online training was new to volunteer managers as well as volunteers.'

'We secured funding for four months to employ one of our volunteers to research all the regulations [and] PPE requirements we would need to safely open our community building kiosk.'

Shifting to digital and remote volunteering

The shift to digital volunteering was a central part of this adaptation for many organisations. This created new opportunities for some organisations to engage volunteers. For others, it was less easy to engage volunteers remotely due to digital exclusion, as discussed above.

'We launched a WhatsApp group for volunteers early on that is active daily and volunteers support one another.'

'All our Board of Trustee meetings were on Zoom, this enabled us to function as an organisation. In terms of keeping in touch with the wider community, Zoom was a useful tool and one that I hope will continue. …Zoom and Teams opened more doors for us in the Islands and hopefully more meetings will be held this way in the future to enable third sector organisations to have input into national meetings and training.'

'[We have] successfully developed and used new platforms for delivering virtual activities with members in their own homes (virtual online clubs and telephone circles) along with accompanying new training for volunteers. Both have already proved very successful. …The combination of these, along with face-to-face clubs when they can resume give the project and organisation a whole array of methods to engage with participants in a wider range of settings and locations, as well as more frequent engagement. [We] know that existing members would really appreciate and benefit from more contact and with a blended delivery approach the project could reach people in remote locations and those who can't attend face-to-face clubs. [We] could keep providing activities in bad weather or when members can no longer keep attending a group. …The virtual world could also provide a safe but convenient setting to encourage isolated people to join a face-to-face club.'

'Incorporating the ability to meet up and connect digitally has opened up collaboration opportunities with new partners both local and further afield. This change of mindset from meeting in our hub space to being able to meet online has allowed us to work with groups normally inaccessible due to distance.'

'Developing online learning, Zooming and Community has really made a difference. Students, graduates, volunteers and staff have all used digital connectivity to help us plan, stay motivated, stay on purpose and create opportunities in the midst of a crisis.'

Changing the focus of their work to support the COVID-19 response

Many organisations decided to adapt by pivoting the focus of their work in order to be able to support the COVID-19 response in some way, despite the closure of their usual programmes.

'Volunteering activity reduced slightly but we diverted volunteering efforts into wider community support/resilience activities. For example:

Setting up two foodbanks and food parcel delivery services in two remote villages – both run by…volunteers and still running now.

A weekly food parcel collection service…for our students, graduates, volunteers and some folk from the wider community. Food poverty is a huge issue for our area and most particularly over recent months with our older folk and families struggling financially, children at home 24/7 and folk being furloughed on reduced wages, not able to access free meals for kids at school and fearful of how they might cope.

…Volunteers and furloughed staff made scrubs for medical centres across the [local authority area], for 8 hospitals across Scotland and for hospitals as far away as Africa.

We've also made and distributed 1000s of face masks for community resilience groups, for frontline workers, for shop keepers, superhero versions for kids in hospital playrooms and then we branched out to manufacturing masks for sale – keeping our volunteers busy at home and providing an income for the women in our business incubator.'

Supporting volunteer wellbeing and mental health

Some organisations described how they were offering greater mental health and wellbeing support to their volunteers, either by adapting their approach to volunteering, or by making additional efforts to maintain contact and check in with volunteers.

'We did instigate shift limits to ensure the wellbeing of volunteers carrying out often distressing work.'

'The major challenge has been mental health and wellbeing for our volunteer team. We offer supported volunteer roles to women who might not be able to sustain volunteering elsewhere, which means staff have offered emotional support via Zoom or phone calls […]. Our Project Assistant regularly sent cards and letters to volunteers throughout both lockdown periods, particularly to those who were shielding.'

6.4 Infrastructure organisation perspectives on the challenges of deploying volunteers during the pandemic

We also asked infrastructure organisations about the challenges that organisations in their area had faced when deploying volunteers during the pandemic. In general, whilst their views were similar to those of volunteer-involving organisations, infrastructure organisations rated the challenges as more severe than the VIO respondents. As discussed earlier in this report, differences between the responses of the infrastructure organisations and individual VIOs are to be expected. In this case, infrastructure organisations were responding on the basis of their overview of the situation across their local area. In some cases they included their knowledge of the situation for mutual aid organisations, and for small volunteer-led organisations that had effectively been inactive since the start of the pandemic. As such, their perspective includes consideration of the situation for a wider range of organisational types than is represented in the VIO survey, and may therefore give different results.

As shown in Figure 6.4, infrastructure organisations considered the greatest challenges that organisations in their area had faced were:

• volunteers experiencing fatigue, burnout or other wellbeing issues – 87% of respondents thought this was either a 'major' or 'some' concern. One respondent noted that informal volunteers and those volunteering linked with less formalised community response groups were at risk of encountering difficult situations during volunteering, with little or no support:

'The health and wellbeing needs of volunteers, particularly informal volunteers or mutual aid groups was not well planned. [Our organisation] came across many cases of volunteers who had dealt with extremely difficult situations – including members of the public disclosing suicidal ideation, mental distress and domestic abuse. We supported all volunteers who got in touch with us and supported them to escalate the issue if necessary. We also sourced funding for a local mental health charity to offer training for volunteers on dealing with difficult situations.'

• the reduction in the participation of pre-existing volunteers as a result of concerns about COVID-19 risks, which 85% of respondents considered to be either a 'major' or 'some' concern.

Infrastructure organisations also expressed particular concern about the challenges arising from exclusion of some groups of volunteers as a result of the pandemic, with 31% of infrastructure organisations considering this to be of 'major' concern.

Infrastructure organisations also highlighted a series of interconnected concerns relating to volunteer skills and confidence to volunteer using digital or remote approaches, combined with concerns relating to organisational capacities and equipment to support digital and remote volunteering.

Figure 6.5 shows the perspectives of infrastructure organisations, when asked about how volunteer-involving organisations have responded to the challenges for volunteering. Infrastructure organisations highlighted adaptations in delivery to put in place COVID-safe environments for volunteering as the most frequent response, with 71% of infrastructure organisations indicating that many or most/all organisations did this. This was followed by changing and refocusing the types of activities that volunteers undertake – 63% of infrastructure organisations said that many or most/all organisations had done this. Moving volunteering activities online was the next most frequent adaptation cited by infrastructure organisations (58%).

Several infrastructure organisations also considered that organisations were responding by providing training and upskilling to support volunteers to adapt to new requirements and new forms of volunteering; and that organisations were offering mental health and wellbeing support to volunteers.