National Volunteers Week reminds us of the importance of saying thank you to our amazing RSPB volunteers. Alan Murray, Head of Volunteering and Employee Engagement picks up the mantle and gets us started...
It’s National Volunteers' Week 2017 and I would like to take the opportunity to say thank you to all our amazing RSPB volunteers. We have over 12,000 regular volunteers from all walks of life giving a fantastic gift of time of over 900,000 hours annually. 82% of our workforce are volunteers and 23% of all time worked at the RSPB is done by our volunteers – in other words, a quarter of all our work wouldn’t get done if we didn’t have you on our team!
Our volunteers come from all sorts of backgrounds with a wide and diverse set of skills and passions. You get involved in every aspect of our work from the more traditional outdoor practical volunteering roles including reserve work parties and the very popular Residential Volunteering to more unusual roles including graphic designers, finance experts, fundraisers, drivers, electricians and many more. The list is as amazing and varied as you are, giving us your considerable skills to help us save nature.
And if you can’t give time regularly or get to a reserve that doesn’t stop you! You get involved with our online campaigns, fundraising in your local communities or join our network of Local Groups. Over 500,000 people give us an hour of their time during Big Garden Birdwatch every January and the upcoming Big Wild Sleepout in July will see people getting involved by sleeping in their garden or joining us on one of our reserves for the night!. However you get inspired to give your time for nature we can’t thank you enough.
Whether it’s conservation on a reserve, engaging our visitors, helping in an office or one of the thousands of ways you volunteer for us. Whatever you do as a volunteer, you are using your skills and talents to help us save nature, thank you.
Alan Murray
During volunteers’ week we will be sharing a selection of stories from across the organisation on our volunteering blog. Come and join the discussion on our Volunteering Facebook page we would love to hear from you. If you aren’t volunteering for us yet, head on over to our volunteering opportunities to find out how you can help make the difference for nature.