Nearly half of Brits have never volunteered over the Christmas period

Recent research commissioned by Perkbox, Europe’s fastest growing employee experience platform, has found that almost half of Brits have never volunteered over the Christmas period.

Perkbox polled 1,000 UK adults on their charity habits in the month of December to celebrate ‘Giving Tuesday’, a yearly initiative on the first Tuesday of December to support and celebrate charities following the well-known shopping days of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Giving Tuesday has led to over £7.8m being donated online and an estimated 4.5 million people in Britain doing something to support a good cause on the day.

Somewhat disappointingly, however, when it came to volunteering over the Christmas period, almost half of Brits admitted they have never volunteered, with the top reasons given for this including ‘preferring to spend time with family’ (38%) and ‘not having enough time’ following close behind in second place (36%). Interestingly, 25% stated they had never thought about volunteering and 13% said they don’t know where to volunteer in their area. Perhaps this is a sign that charities need to be more proactive in how they recruit volunteers and promote how individuals can give back to their local communities.

However, on the flip side, the good news is that for many Brits, giving back to society from a monetary perspective is something they try to do all year round. 39% of those surveyed said they try donating, not just at Christmas, versus one in five respondents who try to donate more in the month of December. Unfortunately for some, it appears that cost is a factor holding them back from giving back – 22% of respondents said they would donate to charity in  December, but they can’t afford it. Not a surprising response considering the high associated costs Christmas brings with presents, food and other festive cheer.

When it comes to the charities people most list to donate to, Perkbox also partnered with SEMrush to analyse the online trends in searches related to charities. Pet-related charities appear to be as popular as ever, having huge search volumes online over the past twelve months. ‘Dogs trust’ was searched an average of 293,000 times monthly, while ‘cats protection’ had 72,000  average monthly searches. ‘British Heart Foundation’ also ranked highly with 110,500 searches on average monthly, as did ‘Nutfield Health’ with 118,500 average monthly searches, while Samaritans and Age UK had 67,250 and 61,125 respectively.

Madlena Pozlevic, Employee Experience Lead at Perkbox says: “It’s wonderful to see so many Brits getting involved in Giving Tuesday through various initiatives – there’s clearly an appetite for charitable giving among Brits as the huge volume of online searches for charities highlights. Therefore, as an employer, it’s definitely a day worth getting involved in, and something that would be appreciated by your employees. This involvement could even be as simple as doing a charity fundraiser in the office on the day such as a bake sale, quiz or raffle.”