Making a success of leading volunteers at scale
Volunteering is woven into the DNA of the charity sector. Yet the way volunteers contribute – and therefore how they should be led – varies profoundly between organisations.
At Cats Protection, more than 10,000 volunteers are not simply supporters of our work; they are central to delivering it. They foster cats in their own homes, support staff in our adoption centres, volunteer in our shops, lead our work in trapping, neutering and returning community and feral cats, manage helplines, organise fundraising, and act as the day-to-day face of the charity to the general public in many parts of the country. Without volunteers, much of our frontline service would simply not happen.
That reality is very different from charities where volunteers are critical, but where their contribution sits primarily in governance, campaigning or fundraising rather than day-to-day delivery. Both models are valid. But they demand different leadership approaches, different systems and a different understanding of motivation.
I first encountered this distinction earlier in my career, working in youth organisations where volunteers were not supplementary but essential to delivery. In Scouting and The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, volunteers were responsible not only for governance or fundraising, but for safeguarding young people, delivering programmes and making judgment calls every day.
Those experiences shaped my understanding that when volunteers sit at the heart of delivery, leadership is less about instruction and more about trust, clarity and shared purpose.
One charity, delivered locally
Cats Protection is the UK’s largest feline welfare charity, founded in 1927. We are one national charity, with a single board, executive leadership team and strategy. Our work, however, is delivered right across the UK through a highly dispersed operating model that combines employed staff with a very large volunteer community.
This distinction matters. We are not a federated or franchise organisation. Volunteers and employees are part of the same charity, working to the same mission, values and standards. But volunteers often operate with a high degree of autonomy, embedded in their local communities and interacting directly with the public every day.
That creates strength – local knowledge, trust and reach – but also complexity. Leadership decisions taken centrally are experienced locally, through the lens of real cats, real people and real capacity constraints.
Volunteers at the core and edges
In charities where volunteers sit primarily in governance or fundraising roles, the volunteer relationship is often episodic and clearly bounded. Trustees attend meetings, ambassadors attend events, fundraisers support campaigns. Volunteers add enormous value, but a charity’s operational engine is largely driven by paid staff.
I have also worked with charities where this model predominated. In those contexts, volunteer leadership focuses more on influence, stewardship and oversight. The risks are different and the consequences of inconsistency are often less immediate.
Where volunteers are core to service delivery, leadership complexity increases significantly. Volunteers are not just advising or supporting the charity; they are representing it daily to the public and directly influencing outcomes for beneficiaries.
At Cats Protection, volunteers may be the first point of contact for someone in distress about a sick or abandoned cat. They may be explaining why there is a waiting list, making welfare judgements or turning someone away kindly but firmly. The emotional labour involved is real, and leaders need to recognise it as such.
What drives volunteers
A common mistake is to assume that volunteers are simply unpaid employees. They are not.
Volunteers are primarily motivated by purpose, identity and belonging. They choose to give their time because the cause resonates deeply with their values or personal experience. Many of our volunteers have had cats themselves or have found companionship, comfort or community through animals.
This mirrors what I saw consistently in youth-focused organisations. Adult volunteers giving their evenings and weekends to support young people were not motivated by efficiency or scale, but by identity and belonging. They did not see themselves as “helpers of the organisation”, but as custodians of a movement or cause. Leadership that failed to recognise that emotional investment quickly lost credibility, even when operationally sound.
Employees, by contrast, are motivated by a wider mix of factors: purpose, certainly, but also professional development, security, progression and pay. Neither set of motivations is superior, but they are different, and leadership approaches need to reflect that difference.
At Cats Protection, we have learned that explaining why a decision has been taken is often more important to volunteers than the decision itself. When changes are introduced without context, volunteers may experience them as a withdrawal of trust rather than a necessary organisational shift.
Employees as volunteers too
Another important reality is that many employees are volunteers themselves – both for Cats Protection and for other charities, schools, sports clubs or community organisations.
This matters because it shapes expectations on both sides of the organisation. Staff who volunteer with us experience first-hand the emotional labour, time pressures and boundary challenges that come with volunteering in a service delivery charity. Others bring insight from volunteering elsewhere, where roles may be more episodic or governance focused. Both perspectives are valuable.
In earlier roles, particularly in education and youth development, I saw how powerful – and fragile – this dual identity can be. When charities acknowledged it, cultures became more empathetic and grounded. When they ignored it, expectations hardened and resentment followed. At Cats Protection, recognising that many people move fluidly between volunteering and employment has helped us build a more respectful, adult conversation about expectations, boundaries and mutual responsibility.
Clarity beats control
With 10,000 volunteers, control is an illusion. What works instead is clarity. Clarity about purpose: why we exist and who we serve. Clarity about standards: what is non-negotiable, particularly around cat welfare and safeguarding. Clarity about decision-making: what sits locally, what must be escalated and where support is available.
At Cats Protection, this has been particularly important in relation to intake decisions. Demand for our services has risen sharply in recent years. We cannot always help every cat immediately. Being clear about the principles that underpin prioritisation, and consistent in applying them, has helped volunteers feel supported when maintaining difficult boundaries with the public.
Clarity does not remove difficulty, but it replaces uncertainty with confidence.
Pace, consistency and burnout
Pace and consistency are harder to manage when volunteers deliver frontline services. Volunteers give time when they can, not when they are told. Local variation is inevitable. Leaders must learn to balance consistency of standards with flexibility in delivery.
This is not simply an operational challenge but a human one. Many volunteers are deeply passionate and highly conscientious, and often find it hard to say “no” to members of the public in need. Without clear boundaries and organisational support that generosity can quickly tip into exhaustion and burnout.
At Cats Protection, this is most visible when intake demand rises sharply and volunteers are approached directly by distressed owners asking for immediate help. We have had to be explicit about when cats can and cannot be taken in, and to support volunteers to hold those boundaries confidently, reinforcing that saying “not yet” or “not in this way” is a responsible welfare decision, not a failure of compassion.
In practice, protecting volunteers from burnout is not about limiting commitment, but about ensuring that commitment can be sustained over time.
Investing in volunteer leadership
In service delivery charities, many volunteers are also leaders. They manage teams, oversee budgets, maintain premises and make complex welfare decisions.
Expecting people to shoulder that responsibility without support is unfair and risky. We have therefore increased our focus on volunteer leadership development: clearer role expectations, improved induction, accessible learning resources and opportunities for peer support.
A practical lesson has been recognising when responsibilities have quietly expanded. In some cases, highly capable volunteers were absorbing more and more accountability simply because they could. Being explicit about what sits with volunteers, what must be escalated and where staff support is required has been essential not only for organisational assurance, but for volunteer wellbeing.
Strong volunteer leadership is not a cost-free alternative to staffing; it is a capability that requires investment.
Culture over structure
Charities often reach for reorganisation when complexity increases. Volunteers rarely experience this as helpful.
What matters more is culture: how people treat one another, how decisions are explained and how mistakes are handled. In dispersed organisations, culture is experienced locally and relationally, not through policy documents.
This is particularly evident in communication. Volunteers are often the visible face of the charity in their community, fielding questions, criticism and emotional pressure directly from the public. At Cats Protection, volunteers regularly explain difficult decisions about waiting lists or service constraints.
When organisational messages are unclear or overly technical, that burden falls disproportionately on them. We have learned that investing in plain-English communication and equipping volunteers with clear, shared language is not just about consistency of message; it is a matter of care. When volunteers feel confident explaining decisions, culture becomes something that enables rather than demands. We are making progress, but we recognise that this is an area where continued effort and discipline are still required.
Being honest about limits
Volunteers are often extraordinarily generous. Without careful leadership, that generosity can be over-relied upon.
One of the hardest but most important lessons we have learned is the value of naming limits openly. Being honest about capacity, risk and sustainability can feel uncomfortable in a mission-driven organisation. Yet volunteers are far more willing to engage constructively when they feel they are being told the truth.
During periods when services have had to be paused or slowed, explaining the rationale clearly – and acknowledging the emotional impact on volunteers themselves – has preserved trust, even when decisions were difficult.
One constant lesson
Looking back across my career, from youth work to international development and now animal welfare, one lesson has remained constant: volunteers respond to leadership that respects their judgement and protects their commitment. Structures change, causes differ, but the fundamentals do not.
Leading volunteers at scale is not about perfect systems or neat solutions. It is about relationships, judgement and humility.
At Cats Protection, our volunteers are not an adjunct to our work. They are at its heart. If there is one lesson I would pass on to other charity leaders, it is this: lead volunteers as partners in purpose, not as a resource to be managed. The impact, for your charity and for the people and communities you serve, will speak for itself.
