Volunteers in food support work – their views and why they matter

The Community Food Research Team at Kingston University and London Metropolitan University examine the role volunteers play in providing food support to low-income families and individuals. Their research shows why food support volunteering is still important post-pandemic, and why the charitable organisations who provide the bulk of food support need to sustain the participation of volunteers more than ever before. 

Food support work – volunteers and why they matter

The number of British families suffering from food insecurity and relying on food support has increased significantly in the last decade. The pandemic and subsequent cost-of-living crisis have seen an even sharper rise.

Despite the profoundly negative impact it has had on people’s lives, the alleviation of food insecurity and provision of food support has largely been relegated to charitable organisations staffed by mostly, unpaid volunteers who form the backbone of the food support infrastructure in the UK. 

Volunteers and charitable food support organisations play a vital role on the front line of dealing with food insecurity.  They engage directly with the implications of poverty, austerity, and rising food and energy costs. Our research shows how they are now a crucial, yet, unofficial part of the welfare state and why sustaining their participation is vital.

A new wave 

The pandemic highlighted the extent of food insecurity and made it possible for substantial innovations to be implemented at speed to coordinate the provision of food support. One of the many changes it wrought was to the volunteer population involved in food support. 

A new wave of volunteers – many younger, skilled, and highly motivated – were keen to engage, and existing organisations had to adapt fast to manage this. The new volunteers helped organisations shift towards more holistic approaches to dealing with food insecurity.  

The end of the pandemic brought more change, as the furlough scheme ended and many volunteers returned to work. As the cost-of-living crisis unfolded and food insecurity rose, food support organisations faced complex problems. The most pressing was maintaining the support they provided with increased demand, reduced supplies and fewer volunteers. 

Kingston University and London Metropolitan University Research 

The work of the Community Food Research Team, comprised of researchers from Kingston University and London Metropolitan University, has involved in-depth evaluations of several food support schemes in London and Sussex. All relied heavily on volunteers, though overseen by paid staff. 

We interviewed 51 unpaid volunteers in two food support schemes, to better understand their views about food insecurity and what should be done to address it. We wanted to understand their motivations for volunteering and what mattered to them. Given the lack of direct government support and increased demand and need for food support, a greater understanding of volunteers’ motivations and experiences is crucial, as their role is arguably now more important than ever.

What motivates volunteers

Most of the volunteers we encountered were female, white, and middle-aged and surprisingly, almost half remained in paid work. They volunteered because they wanted to make a difference locally; to contribute to the development of community capital and resilience within their own localities. As a result, the ethos of the specific projects really mattered. 

The projects

One project focused on children and families. It encouraged cooking and eating together through the weekly provision of pre-weighed ingredient boxes, distributed via schools (mostly to low-income or vulnerable families). 

Recipes were designed to be nutritious, child-friendly and reproducible for <£5 per week per family. Volunteers in this project never met the recipients so were one step removed from end users. Their motivation was the strong belief that the development of cooking skills would not only equip children with future skills and reduce food insecurity but contribute to increased confidence, self-belief and resilience. Thus, food was seen as the catalyst for shared family time; cooking and eating, improving nutrition, alleviating food insecurity and enhancing the mental and emotional wellbeing of children. These values resonated strongly with the volunteers concerned. 

The other project involved the use of food surplus across three different sites. Donated foods were used to cook fresh meals, offered in a café-like environment (two sites) or given away at food hubs (all three sites), using a pay-as-you-feel approach. Volunteers here were also motivated by strong values which they viewed as aligned to the project aims. These included beliefs that by using food waste they were benefitting the environment, helping those who needed support and providing companionship and acceptance to excluded people (e.g., the homeless). Interviews highlighted the friendships that developed between regular attendees and the benefits of this to the individuals concerned and to the project itself.

Emerging themes

Two themes emerged from the interviews. The first concerned the dissonance volunteers felt between what they were doing and wider societal and political structures. On the one hand, they felt strongly about the root causes of poverty and the need to address food insecurity holistically; for them, food had far wider resonance than simply nutrition. They were very critical of an undignified system and government [in]actions that forced many families to rely on food support. On the other hand, they were also conscious that, in many ways, their unpaid labour helped the government to avoid taking responsibility, effectively letting them off the hook. 

The second theme was that of ‘community’ and ‘community building’.  These were major motivational themes for volunteers in the projects we researched in both a broad and narrow sense - community developing within families through cooking and eating together, and the development of a community among disparate groups who would not usually meet, through sharing a common space offering food. Additionally, the volunteers formed communities and the friendships they developed enhanced their motivation to continue volunteering, even when this meant juggling other commitments. 

Volunteers matter

Our research suggests that clarity about the aims of the work and how it will directly contribute to the local community may be important motivators for volunteers. Encouraging and enabling volunteers to develop friendships and a sense of community is also important. Given the current political and economic dynamics, it is clear that managing, attracting and retaining volunteers is key to the sustainability of many food support organisations and the continued provision of food support for those in need.