Citizens Advice in England helped over 2.5 million people last year
Volunteers at Citizens Advice have huge opportunities for learning, training and, most importantly, to help their local community.
As the UK’s largest advice provider, people go to Citizens Advice for support to resolve their problems. Citizens Advice local offices are equipped to provide advice on any issue, from debt to employment to consumer and housing issues.
Around 10,000 people volunteer in local offices, plus around 2,000 trustees and 1,500 Witness Service volunteers, enabling the Citizens Advice service to provide information, advice and support to clients. In addition volunteers also provide further support in other functions such as research and campaigns, information giving, administration and fundraising.
Volunteers at Citizens Advice create value in a number of different ways
Sonnet’s research, released in July 2024, in collaboration with the Centre for Charity Effectiveness at Bayes Business School, has found that the value of volunteering at Citizens Advice was worth £100 million for 2023 to 2024. This value is on top of the positive impact created by the service’s information, advice and support to clients.
We found that volunteering adds this value by:
- increasing the employability of volunteers through skills development
- helping volunteers develop and progress in their careers
- improving the health and wellbeing of volunteers
- improving life satisfaction through a sense of belonging and purpose
This research also produced a toolkit to enable local offices to understand the costs of different elements of their volunteering model (e.g. recruitment, training, supervision) and model costs for adapting, improving or scaling back elements of these models. In this way, the research empowers and supports the strategic development of volunteering.
Read more about our research findings:
