About us

Volunteer Bristol is the city's only Volunteer Development Agency.  For more than 40 years we’ve been helping people from all walks of life to make a difference to their own lives and the lives of others through volunteering. 

We offer a range of services for volunteers and volunteer-involving organisations.  We deal with over 15000 enquiries about volunteering every year, offer over 600 volunteering opportunities for around 400 voluntary and community organisations across Bristol.  It’s something we’re very proud of.  We are an accredited Volunteer Centre and have a strong focus on helping people to overcome barriers to volunteering and helping organisations to become more inclusive in their volunteer recruitment.

Our history

Volunteer Bristol started out in 1966 as Service 9 - Bristol’s Centre for Young Volunteers.  From our base on Gloucester Road we helped over 1300 young people to volunteer in our first five years. 

In 1979 we became an independent charity, in 1986 a Limited Company and in 2000 moved to our present location in Royal Oak House and became ‘Volunteering Bristol’.

October 2002 saw us gain our Volunteer Development England Quality Mark and in 2006 our Volunteer Centre Quality Accreditation by the newly formed Volunteering England.  As well as demonstrating our excellence across all six core functions of a Volunteer Centre (which include brokerage, developing volunteering opportunities and good practice development), we were commended for our emphasis on helping people to overcome barriers to volunteering and our work with groups that may be considered marginalised.  This focus continues today.

In 2011 we rebranded the organisation again - taking the ‘ing’ off our name, to become Volunteer Bristol.  But the exercise was about more than just dropping a few letters.  These are difficult times for voluntary organisations and we are in the process of reviewing the service that we provide to volunteers and volunteer-involving organisations to ensure that we can continue to support volunteering into the future.