Give time and earn Nectar points
Pilot scheme will see volunteers rewarded with Nectar points
The UK's biggest loyalty card provider, nectar, is to join the growing number of schemes that are seeking to incentivise people to volunteer.
A six month pilot in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead has just been given the go ahead. Local residents will be able to earn Nectar points when they apply to volunteer for a number of schemes, including special constables and street clean up teams.
The scheme will only target new volunteers as an incentive to encourage those that are less likely to get involved. A spokesperson for the Royal Borough Council said, "We have consulted existing volunteers who said they did not want to receive points as they didn't volunteer for rewards. We are targeting another type of person who will become philanthropic because of a reward."
The pilot is being funded by the Council which includes £9.5k to be spent on buying points from Nectar.
The scheme follows a growing trend of new incentivisations for volunteering, including the recently launched Blue Dot World, which has been described as the 'nectar scheme for giving'.
Here's an idea - why doesn't someone come up with an 'incentive scheme' for unemployed volunteers who can opt in to volunteer and receive full (reasonable) travel expenses and also a lunch allowance, without filling in masses of forms - starting with Work Programme contract holders maybe? Thoughts?
It is good to see these incentives for volunteers, however the rewards should not need to be funded by Councils and charities. In contrast, the #TimeMiles reward scheme is 100% funded by retailers and would return significantly more money to the volunteers (£2.50 per hour). We will follow this scheme with interest.
Interesting. It'll probably be met by howls of 'but that's not volunteering!' but it'll be interesting to see if it has any success engaging people in giving time.
One interesting assumption is that people who aren't volunteering have never volunteered. The last national survey showed (I think) 20% of people had volunteered before but weren't now. They would therefore not be totally new to volunteering if they gave time again although this is what Windsor and Maidenhead council seem to be assuming.
I'm also intrigued by the idea that a reward is what will get people giving, as opposed to good opportunities that meet their needs and a flexible to accommodate the people's other responsibilities and roles. It'll be interesting to see if such a distinction is drawn in any evaluation.
Finally, I'd be interested to know how the points will be allocated. Will it be a set number for simply signing up (or turning up) or on the basis of hours volunteered? I think I can safely assume hours won't be allocated according to the actual impact a volunteer has.