It looks like volunteering. It feels like volunteering. By George, it is volunteering!

Now I’m a glass-is-half-full kind of a person but when I think about the state volunteering is in it strikes me that it is increasingly challenging for charities to find the volunteers they need. Furthermore, the recession and the pace of modern life have also made it difficult for people to find the time to volunteer. Sadly, organising a successful volunteering placement has become a time consuming task of form-filling, safeguarding and administration.

It is important to recognise the importance of traditional unpaid roles such as hospital visitors or helpline volunteers. These kinds of roles and this model of volunteering should always exist, however, getting volunteering into the DNA of the nation requires diversifying the whole scene. The Big Society agenda, being heavy on rhetoric but light on funding, will only be realised if individuals can get active easily, locally and in opportunities that are engaging and build on what they’re into.

So maybe it’s time to think differently. Largely flying under the radar, especially in Birmingham, for a number of years have been Timebanks. These community based initiatives offer a kind of reciprocal service exchange using units of time as currency, so one hour of volunteer time equates to one ‘time credit’. Time spent providing services on a voluntary basis can in turn be ‘spent’ on time receiving the services that they in turn need. The system relies on a diversity of skills and services being offered so that a young person who, for example, spends an hour gardening for an elderly person can benefit from an hour’s, say, math’s tuition from another person in the scheme. It’s even possible for participants to become ‘time philanthropists’ and donate their time credits back into the scheme for use by people with greater needs.

For obvious reasons, this idea appeals to the architects of the Big Society and recent months have seen a rapid expansion in the numbers of Timebanks being set up and they have seen new start ups increase from one a month to one a week. Martin Simon, founder of Timebanking in the UK, says that this increase can be attributed to the fact that the approach is anchored in the grassroots as people respond to local needs resulting from the recession. Nurturing mutually beneficial relationships appears to be the key to running successful Timebanks, as well as the pivotal role of the ‘time broker’. This person helps volunteers identify their skills, sets up assignments, records their time credits and generally builds the networks necessary for the system to work. Martin is slightly nonplussed as to why time banking has largely failed to take off in Birmingham. He cites as an example the successful approach of Time 2 Trade in Sandwell which offers a frankly enormous range and scope of services from adult literacy to washing up! Martin sees no reason why the success there can’t be translated to Birmingham.

Timebanking is just one way in which we in the third sector can embrace new kinds of volunteering and meet the challenges of offering a modern and fulfilling volunteer experience. If volunteering can be less about what we do for a few hours a week and more about giving us a break from our individualist and consumerist lives therefore encouraging a greater concern for the needs of others and our wider communities, then maybe we’ll achieve the kind of society we glass-is-half-full types fantasise about.

Georgina Watts, BVSC Development Worker