Results of volunteer surveys

Research by the Olympic legacy charity Join In found that nearly a third of respondents said the Games Makers had positively changed the way they viewed volunteering.

More than half of people have been unable to find out about local volunteering opportunities, research commissioned by the Olympic legacy charity Join In indicates.

An online survey of 2,174 adults by the research organisation YouGov, carried out between 15 and 17 May, asked people about their opinion of volunteering since last year’s Olympic and Paralympic games.

It found that 29 percent of respondents said they would like to volunteer, but have not done so. 51 percent said they did not know where to find out about local volunteering opportunities.

It also found that 31 percent said the Games Makers had positively changed the way they viewed volunteering, and the same proportion said they would have like to have been a Games Maker.

Only 2 percent of respondents said they had done more volunteering as a result of London 2012. 71 per cent agreed that more volunteering by the general public in their local area was important to ensure the Games Makers’ legacy lives on.

Join In is running the Join In Summer 2013 event between 27 July and 9 September, which will offer 5,000 local volunteering events for people to sign up to.

Separate research carried out by Join In with 252 of the 70,000 Games Makers showed that they have contributed more than 800,000 extra volunteering hours since the end of the games in September.

An online survey carried out by Join In between 23 and 28 May asked how many hours a week they had volunteered before the Olympics and how many extra they had given since. When averaged out across all 70,000 volunteers the total extra hours given came out as 873,600, or 22,400 hours per week. 

The survey found that 62 percent said they had been motivated to continue volunteering and, of those, 40 percent volunteer for local sports clubs or associations.