Institute for Volunteering Research (IVR)

Director of IVR visits Fiji

IVR is preparing for the International Year of Volunteers 2026

IVR was one of the evaluators of the first International Year of Volunteers in 2001, and has since been a steadfast and reliable partner in the international effort to understand volunteer involvement around the globe, in all its forms and contexts, supporting policy and practice with applied research.

To prepare for the upcoming important year of international involvement, the director of IVR, as a skills-based volunteer, in the last eight months, has visited and sought dialogue with colleagues in nine countries on three continents: Albania, Belgium, China, Fiji, Germany, Japan, Mongolia, New Zealand and South Korea.

He is also continuing the conversations started during the pandemic with colleagues on the other continents, see Volunteering in a Global Pandemic. IVR is also part of networks such as International Society for Third Sector Research, International Association for Volunteer Effort and United Nations Volunteers.

In 2001 the challenge seemed to be mostly to relate to raising the profile of volunteer involvement. 25 years later the greatest challenge appears to be to preserve the role of volunteer involvement in civil society especially in nations that have previously led on the effort to better understand volunteer involvement, and to ensure its renewal across generations where such renewal seems in danger. The well-known American academic Robert Putman warns: “join or die”.

In England also, IVR calls for determined efforts to strengthen inclusive volunteer involvement to avoid further polarisation of society. That challenge is matched by the effort to work with nations that due to historical, political and socio-economic reasons may currently not have got the benefit of established institutions or the resources to support them.

The evidence collected over the past 25 years points to the need for ensuring that volunteer involvement is done well, undertaken respectful of individuals’ choices, protecting their wellbeing and livelihoods, and most importantly ensuring that they can make a difference, rather than wasting their time, energy and good will, with poor volunteer involvement practice. Only then can they collectively move towards underpinning more inclusive civil societies.

Preparing for the International Year of Volunteers 2026, for IVR means working within uncertainty and facing serious challenges, as do academics and practitioners in many countries. However, the prize, a world where individuals can be confident and feel safe about their decision to volunteer and where communities grow stronger through volunteer involvement, remains its motivation and vision.

IVR was set up in 1997 to undertake high quality research on volunteering. It started out as a department of Volunteering England, became part of the research department of NCVO in 2013 and moved to the University of East Anglia in 2019. During the last twenty years, IVR has played a leading role in applied volunteering research involving volunteer organisations, the public sector, private sector and the government.

IVR’s mission is to support and undertake high quality volunteering research to bring about a world in which the power and energy of volunteering and the difference volunteering and volunteering research make to individuals and communities is well understood, so that individuals can be confident and feel safe about their decision to volunteer and communities grow stronger.

Get in touch with us by emailing info.ivr@uea.ac.uk