Published on 14/05/2025 & Updated on 25/11/2025
As our volunteers will tell you, being around the kindness of others is inspiring. If you visited our Welsh hospice, tucked into the hills of Carmarthenshire, you would see what volunteering makes possible – most of our team are volunteers.
Volunteering taps into our deep need to help others. It’s what motivates 28% of UK adults to volunteer and come back home with a smile on their face.
What motivates people to volunteer? In this guide, we’ll share five reasons.
1. To Help Others
Using our skills to help others helps us find meaning in our lives. When we volunteer, we have the chance to help people we might never reach in our day-to-day work lives. For example, at our hospice, volunteers offer their support to people who are often in the last year of their lives – people they might never have met and learnt from otherwise.
The UK government’s Community Life Survey 2023/24 shows that 46% of adults’ main motivation for volunteering is the chance to help people or improve things. Volunteering gives us the freedom to choose how we want to help and the support we need to contribute in a safe environment.
As the poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou wrote in her first book of essays, ‘Every great journey starts with a single step.’ Every day you volunteer, you’re taking your own steps to live your values and support organisations close to your heart. This simple action can bring meaning to your life and a sense of hope and purpose.
2. Be Part of a Community
Whether you’ve newly moved home or are simply looking to meet new people, volunteering can help you feel part of a community. 94% of British Heart Foundation volunteers shared, for example, how volunteering helped them feel less isolated or lonely.
Our own Skanda Vale Hospice team survey reflects how happy our volunteer team is, and how they feel fully supported in their roles. This shows in our volunteer retention rate, which is over 95%. Which is to say, once you try volunteering, you may well become hooked!
While the team of volunteers you are working with may come from diverse backgrounds, having shared values and a sense of purpose can help you build friendships. Similarly, you may choose to volunteer with people, maybe children, the elderly, or those in a hospice setting. Building human relationships in different situations and stages of life is an opportunity to learn from the experiences of others and it fosters a sense of community.
In this video, our volunteer acupuncturist Kam Winchester shares how patients can become teachers:
Volunteering Opportunities at Skanda Vale Hospice
At Skanda Vale Hospice, our mission is to provide the very best care that we can. We’re primarily led and run by a community of compassionate volunteers offering their skills and time to people affected by life-limiting illnesses.
If you would like to volunteer with us, we have a range of roles available from nursing to maintenance and administration. You can find out more about our volunteer opportunities here.
3. Learn New Skills and Gain Work Experience
Many people volunteer as a way to learn new skills. As soft skills are becoming more valued in the workplace, volunteering offers situations where you can practice communication, patience and listening.
For most voluntary roles, you can share your existing skills in the areas you’re drawn to support. For example, at our hospice, volunteers can offer their help as carers, companions or complementary therapists, but can equally cook, garden or help in our charity shop.
Volunteering potentially offers more flexibility than paid employment – you can try different roles and tasks in one organisation. If it’s a cause you care about, you may be inspired to see and fit into roles you didn’t imagine yourself doing. We find this is definitely the case with our volunteers at Skanda Vale Hospice.
Another common reason for volunteering is to gain work experience. This might be when you’re starting out in your career, or are maybe looking to explore a new professional area.
Sometimes, volunteering itself can help you discover a new passion. Ahalia Seelan moved to Wales to become our Volunteer Quality Assurance & Corporate Governance lead. You can learn more about Ahalia’s story here:
4. Mental Health and Wellbeing
Offering our skills through volunteering can be very beneficial for us too, with 77% of volunteers in the UK experiencing improved mental health and wellbeing. One suggestion for why this might be is that volunteering shifts the focus away from our own personal worries and challenges; instead putting our energy towards small steps and helping others.
When we offer support to people who are potentially experiencing greater difficulties than our own, or when we work towards resolving greater issues, our own problems can feel less significant by comparison. Similarly, being part of a community brings a sense of belonging and mutual support.
5. Build Confidence
Lastly, volunteering can build your confidence. When you’re offering your skills and time in an organisation you care about and are part of a community, learning and gaining a greater sense of perspective on life, it follows that you will grow as an individual too.
Volunteering can bring you face-to-face with challenges, whether it’s handling responsibilities or offering empathy and support to those in difficult situations. While it’s okay to make mistakes, you’ll find over time that, with training and encouragement from the people around you, those challenges will become easier. You’ll gain more confidence, will feel more capable and able to make a difference.
Why Volunteer with Skanda Vale Hospice
We hope this guide has helped you understand some of the many reasons why people volunteer and take small steps to help others in their communities.
At Skanda Vale Hospice, we offer volunteer opportunities for people who want to be part of our heart-centred approach to care. Whether you can offer hands on care or companionship, cooking, maintenance, retail support or more, you’ll be a valued and nurtured member of our team. Learn more about becoming a hospice volunteer in our guide.
You can find out more about our volunteering opportunities and volunteer accommodation here. If you’d like a conversation with a friendly member of the team about joining us, please give us a call on 01559 371222.
