Not much happened during the merry month of June as Help From Home was 'out of town' so to speak. Still, I managed to add a 'Business Case for Employee Volunteering' webpage to compliment the 'Lunch Break Volunteering' campaign I'm running at the moment.
Some other brief snippets of 'happenings':
- Managed to secure the endorsement of Jamie Thomas, CEO of Red Foundation and i-volunteer for my campaign directed at encouraging high street Volunteer Centres to promote micro volunteering. Pyjamatastic!
- I contacted the WCVA (Wales Council for Voluntary Action) to support my campaign at Volunteer Centres. They stated they wouldn't put their name to it, but instead would actively promote micro volunteering to the various Welsh Volunteer Centres under their wing using information I supply them. This is really encouraging as they are the first main volunteer body to both acknowledge and promote micro volunteering. Marvellicious!
- I wrote a feature back in January explaining the concept of micro volunteering for i-volunteer. Have been told in the past couple of days that it is the most widely read article on their network. Looks like micro volunteering is gaining ground in popularity. Woohoo!
- In the past, I haven't been too sure about the impact that HFH could make in the volunteering world. I'm beginning to see some real tangible results from my efforts and it really is only now dawning on me as to how massive the untapped market of micro volunteering could be.
- I've looked at a few stats to see what potential the market has, that HFH could tap into. I have no idea how many people might be interested in micro volunteering, so I've just let the figures speak for themselves and let you decide what the market could be:
England + Wales adult population (Help From Home) = 26 million
UK businesses (Lunch Break Volunteering) = 2.15 million
UK Care Homes (Care Services scheme) = 21,000
UK outgoing tourists (Help From Holiday - under construction)= 8.8 million
England + Wales school kids (Help From School - under construction) = 12 million
UK Volunteers (people who participate in a voluntary act) = 20.3 million
Figures taken from various sources including UK 2001 Census, carehome.co.uk etc
That's alot of people and obviously, not everybody will be interested in micro volunteering, but the high number of UK volunteers is suggestive that there's potentially a huge area of interest to be tapped.
But of course, that's just the UK, what about ..... well, I'll just let your mind wander about the rest of the world!!
