Bans on unpaid internships ‘an assault on volunteering’, says nfpSynergy founder

A blog by Joe Saxton says it can be difficult to differentiate between a volunteer and an intern, and any ban on unpaid internships should be resisted by the sector

Restrictions or bans on some internships are “an assault on volunteering by the back door” and should be resisted by charities, according to Joe Saxton, driver of ideas and founder of the research consultancy nfpSynergy.

In a blog post published yesterday on the nfpSynergy website, Saxton says it can be difficult to differentiate between a volunteer and an intern, and charities should therefore be concerned at attempts to outlaw some internships.

His warning comes as new polling data released by the Social Mobility Commission on Monday says 72 per cent of the public back a change in the law on internships, with 42 per cent of respondents saying they strongly support a ban on unpaid internships lasting longer than four weeks.

The poll contacted 5,000 people and was conducted by YouGov, the Social Mobility Commission said. The commission is an independent body that monitors progress in improving social mobility.

A private member’s bill proposing a ban on internships that exceed four weeks is due to be discussed in the House of Lords on Friday.

But Saxton’s blog says that restricting volunteering to the over-30s, with under-30s classed as interns, would affect people who volunteer at a young age and work abroad or because of a religious or political conviction.

Saxton writes: “Perhaps one way would be that we ban internships with companies, but charities are OK. What about volunteering vs internships with the NHS? Or an MP? Or a party political campaign? Or a campaign group? Are those OK? So it’s OK to intern for anything as long as it’s not a company?

“Of course we should encourage any organisation which can afford to pay interns to do so. But the idea that unpaid internships should be banned is an assault on volunteering by the back door. And the voluntary sector should resist it with all its might.”

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Too much focus on full-time volunteering ‘could risk charities being seen as exploitative’

Karl Wilding, director of public policy and volunteering at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, mulls the issue at a fringe event at the Conservative Party conference

Too much focus on full-time volunteering could perpetuate inequality and risk charities being seen as exploitative, according to Karl Wilding, director of public policy and volunteering at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.

Speaking at a Conservative Party conference fringe event hosted by the think tank the Centre for Social Justice in Manchester yesterday, Wilding said that although volunteering offered benefits to the volunteers, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds would be unable to afford to participate in full-time, long-term programmes.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport commissioned a review last year into the impact of full time volunteering and the possibility of setting up a government-backed scheme, which is due to report back later this month. 

Wilding said the review needed to consider the impact of encouraging full-time volunteering on social mobility.

He said volunteering was “an incredibly powerful social intervention” in helping volunteers into employment, but questioned whether it needed to be full-time to be valuable.

“Might we be making social mobility problems in this country even worse, by giving some people who already able to give themselves a leg up, an even bigger leg up by creating opportunities that are going to strengthen their CV significantly?” he said.

He said that it might be easier and more cost effective to allow jobseekers to spend more of their time volunteering, rather than insisting they actively look for jobs.

Another concern, he said, was how a full-time volunteering programme would be perceived.

He said: “Are we opening ourselves up to the charge that full-time volunteering, which will require changes to minimum wage legislation to enable us to pay a stipend, is just us finding another way to exploit young people?”

Wilding also said that there were only about 1,000 people volunteering full time and warned that such volunteering could be going against the grain of current volunteering patterns.

“All the trends tell us that the way people are getting involved is actually shifting away from full-time volunteering to episodic, disjointed pieces of time,” he said.

But James Probert, director of strategy and impact at City Year, a charity that supports young people to complete a year’s full-time volunteering, said many of Wilding’s concerns could be dealt with by a change in the legal status of full time volunteers.

Talking about the current legislative set up, he said: “If you do volunteering you are ‘Neet’ – not in employment, education or training – there is no other box for people who are not doing it alongside work or studying.”

He said minimum wage rules, under which people could be paid subsistence expenses but not a stipend and could not receive benefits in kind such as recognised training, was making it very difficult for volunteers and organisations that wanted to provide opportunities.

He said he wanted to see a recognised system for taking a year out to volunteer, pointing to similar systems in America, France and Italy.

Lack of access, he said, was “a problem with the status quo” which could be improved by taking replicating the government’s the International Citizen Service, which offers 12-month volunteering opportunities overseas as a domestic gap year, which “doesn’t cost a lot of money and isn’t only for rich kids”.

He said he hoped the government would allow volunteers on such a scheme to receive benefits at around the same rate as job seekers’ allowance to help support them.

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More young people are volunteering, says nfpSynergy research

But levels are falling among those aged over 45, according to the consultancy’s latest figures

Volunteering levels among the younger generations are increasing, but falling among middle-aged people, new figures from the consultancy nfpSynergy show.

Its latest statistics on volunteering, based on surveys involving thousands of people since 2004, the consultancy says that the proportion of 16 to 24-year-olds who volunteer has increased significantly over the past 13 years, rising from 15 per cent participation to 29 per cent in August this year.

The research shows that there has been a similar rise in the proportion of 25 to 34-year-olds volunteering over the same period, with 26 per cent of respondents to the most recent survey saying they had volunteered over the previous three months, up from 14 per cent in 2004.

The research shows that volunteering rates peaked at 33 per cent among 16 to 24-year-olds in 2013/14, but the rates for 25 to 34-year-olds are doing so now. According to nfpSynergy, this might show that people who volunteered at school and university are continuing those habits as they get older.

The figures show that 16 to 34-year-old men are now one of the most likely groups to volunteer, closely followed by women of the same age.

But volunteering rates appear to be falling among 45 to 54-year-olds and 55 to 64-year-olds, the figures show. In 2012, 20 per cent of 45 to 54-year-olds volunteered, as did 22 per cent of 55 to 64-year-olds, according to nfpSynergy.

This fell to 14 per cent of 45 to 54-year-olds and 15 per cent of 55 to 64-year-olds, according to the most recent research in August.

Both of these age groups have not been targeted with any major initiatives to increase volunteering rates, which nfpSynergy said could be contributing to the decline in volunteering.

The gap in volunteering rates between men and women has closed significantly in recent years, with increases in the proportion of men volunteering over the past 13 years.

Overall volunteering rates have remained generally stable at around 20 per cent, the figures show.

Joe Saxton, co-founder of nfpSynergy, said he did not think the National Citizen Service, which includes an element of community work, was responsible for the rise in volunteering rates among younger people.

He said schools and universities were better at encouraging people to volunteer and it was a more important part of building a CV than it used to be.

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