voluntary organisations, social enterprises and volunteering
voluntary organisations, social enterprises and volunteering
voluntary organisations, social enterprises and volunteering
Looking Ahead: Building on the Recovery of the Scottish Household Survey 2025 Results
Created: 12/11/2026News/Events Category: Volunteering
Volunteer Scotland have released new insights into Scotland's volunteering landscape following the 2025 Scottish Household Survey results.
Scotland's volunteering landscape in 2025 presents an encouraging but complex picture. Participation has increased across both formal and informal volunteering, with total volunteering rising from 48% to 52% of adults.
This equates to an estimated 2.4 million adults volunteering in Scotland in 2025, including around 1.25 million formal volunteers and 1.82 million informal volunteers. Formal volunteering continues its recovery from post‑pandemic lows, while informal volunteering has reached its highest recorded level.
At the same time, the findings highlight some important challenges. While more people are volunteering, volunteering is becoming less intensive. Volunteers are contributing fewer hours overall than they did in 2022, suggesting that participation is broadening but becoming less time‑intensive. This likely reflects changing lifestyles, competing demands on people’s time, and evolving patterns of engagement.
The continued reliance on a relatively small civic core of high‑intensity volunteers also raises important questions about the long‑term sustainability of volunteering and the resilience of volunteer involving organisations.
These findings reinforce the importance of continuing efforts to make volunteering more inclusive, accessible and sustainable. Through the Volunteering Action Plan, partners across Scotland are working towards a vision where everyone can volunteer, more often, and throughout their lives.
The evidence presented in this report points to several priorities for future action:
- Reducing participation inequalities by addressing barriers faced by marginalised groups.
- Creating more flexible and accessible volunteering opportunities that reflect changing lifestyles and patterns of participation.
- Supporting volunteer involving organisations to recruit, retain and support a diverse volunteer base.
- Strengthening pathways into volunteering for people who have previous volunteering experience but are not currently engaged.
- Ensuring volunteers can contribute safely, positively and without fear of hostility, discrimination or abuse.
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