Part Time Voluntary Work

• You can do sedentary work, sat in front of a computer or sorting out organisations’ books or filing.
• You can meet people by working in a charity shop or in a raft of other positions that involve engaging with the public.
• You can drive – whether it’s taking older people to the doctor or the hospital, or delivering things.
• You can do physical work such as clearing ponds and ditches, thinning woodland, restoring buildings, maintaining steam railways and so on.
• There is the whole area of getting involved in your community. You can be on the committee of your local tennis club, for example, become a school governor, be a local councillor and so on.

Where to Find Voluntary Work

Although the scope is enormous, finding exactly the vacancy that suits you is not always easy; persistence and patience are sometimes required. So where can you go to get help with finding vacancies in the voluntary sector? Locally, there are several options:

• The local council, who will have someone, or even several someones, who liaise with the voluntary sector
• The library
• The local newspaper
• Increasingly, there is a ‘shop’ on the high street that is funded by the local voluntary organisations and staffed largely by volunteers that has all the local vacancies

If you want to look a bit further afield, there is the Retired Executives’ Action Clearing House’ (REACH) that matches people’s professional skills with voluntary jobs.

There are also numerous websites that offer opportunities for voluntary work. Below are listed just a few of them that you may find helpful:

Community Service Volunteers - www.csv.org.uk
Volunteering England -  www.volunteering.org.uk
Active Communities Directorate - www.homeoffice.gov.uk/communities/volunteering
do-it.org.uk - www.do-it.org.uk
Community Channel - www.communitychannel.org
TimeBank - www.timebank.org.uk
Business in the Community - www.bitc.org.uk
The Media Trust - www.mediatrust.org

If you think that you would like to do voluntary work for an individual organisation that you feel does good work, look at their own website. For example, the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association (SSAFA) offers voluntary work in a number of roles from as little as four hours a week. Have a look at their website to find out where your nearest branch is and then go and talk to them.


Retirement does not necessarily mean giving up work for good. Indeed, work provides a necessary ingredient of many people’s retirement because they do not feel ready to put their feet up for good just because they leave their job at 60, 65 or whatever.

There are a huge number of options for you. You can choose full time or part time work, paid or voluntary. You can work for someone else or you can work for yourself. The good thing is that you can choose, so choose something that you feel will suit you best. Before you rush headlong into it, stop, think and do some planning so that you make the right choice.

Work can be stimulating an rewarding; if and when you come to choose work in retirement, make sure that you pick something that will enhance your retirement and make it the most satisfying time of your life.

Go to the links in the box to get further information on part time work in retirement. Also, make sure that you read our Guide to Voluntary Work, to get more ideas and information.

This month why not visit our New Retirement Courses site