This is a tool for thinking about volunteers and engagement.
The tool is used to make you think about why people should volunteer to join an engagement project.
As this table suggests, roughly only one-in-two people perform any political action at all. See the Research Review (PDF, 451k) for more on this.
Reported political action, 1986-2000 |
|||||
% saying they had |
1986 |
1989 |
1991 |
1994 |
2000 |
Signed a petition |
34 |
41 |
53 |
39 |
42 |
Contacted their MP |
11 |
15 |
17 |
14 |
16 |
Contacted radio, TV or newspaper |
3 |
4 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
Gone on a protest or demonstration |
6 |
8 |
9 |
9 |
10 |
Spoken to an influential person |
1 |
3 |
5 |
3 |
4 |
Contacted a Government Department |
3 |
3 |
4 |
3 |
4 |
Formed a group of like-minded people |
2 |
3 |
2 |
3 |
2 |
Raised the issue in an organisation they already belonged to |
5 |
4 |
5 |
4 |
5 |
None of these |
56 |
48 |
37 |
53 |
47 |
Base |
1548 |
1516 |
1445 |
1137 |
2293 |
Source: Bromley et al 2001: 201 table 9.1 |
As you can see from the evidence above, only a small number of people are likely to get involved in such activities, possibly because they are unaware of the benefits of getting involved or the range of opportunities. In our project we found that it was really important to think about the benefits for the volunteers at the start of the project, which helped to get more people involved.