Building Communities of Volunteering

Time for Participation

After more than 20 Years of charity leadership with large national UK charities, I decided to follow my passion to radically modernise charity thinking and action on volunteering and participation. Demographic and social change in the UK and worldwide simply means the way charities have thought about supporter participation for decades has to change.

So, I started Time for Impact to help charities, not for profits and community groups maximise the untapped goodwill in their cause communities. 

All charities have cause communities made up of active supporters and others who are rooting for the cause but not actively involved.

These less active supporters may be current or past beneficiaries, their friends and family, or simply people moved by the injustice and plight of the cause. 

Charities are usually pretty successful at mobilising supporters in volunteering their time on a regular basis, perhaps helping in a shop, befriending someone who is isolated or vulnerable, or helping out in a food bank. They are usually pretty adept at engaging supporters in fundraising activity, running marathons or running bake sales.

But, these individuals account for a minority of a charity’s support base. Furthermore, they are often over deployed in multiple volunteer or fundraising roles and slowly become burnt out through years of duty for the cause, with limited respite or succession planning.

The sector too often focuses on the short term pressure of filling roles rather than the long term lifetime benefit of building communities. Fill a role and there will be support today but build a community and there will be willing participants for years to come.

So, the role of Time for Impact is to help charities to build participation and community building and mobilisation into their strategic plans. We want to help charities to leverage and build their whole cause community not just those that fit nicely into well-defined roles.

Many supporters simply do not know how their time, interests and skills may align with the charities’ needs. They want to help but the paperwork and processes or the need to sign up to regular or prescribed roles puts them off. Supporters want to help in their own ways, and have power to define their involvement, not just to fill predetermined roles. So, we help charities build an environment which supports this. 

Many supporters have significant lived experience so we help charities explore how they can partner with people with lived experience to improve existing services and build new services to address needs.

We called the company Time for Impact because fundamentally we strongly believe in the power of giving time and the impact our shared input has on the causes we feel deeply about.

Chris Wade

Lead Volunteering Consultant

Time for Impact

How can Time for Impact, volununteering consultants help?

We are experts in designing volunteer strategies that enable charities to realise the potential of their supporter communities.

We can help you devise successful volunteering strategies, processes, structures and cultures that help you maximise that potential impact. We bring together extensive knowledge of participation programmes, understanding of human behaviour, and culture change expertise to help you bring about a quantum change in  the way your communities enhance your work.

We have developed a Participation Self Assessment Matrix to help you assess your organisation's readiness to mobilise the power of your potential support.

Please contact us for more details.

Co-Production with Lived Experience

Involving people with lived experience in your work is essential. However, to do so effectively takes planning, resources and skill. 

We can provide advice of designing governance, project management and a culture of coproduction.

Please contact us for more details.