Big Society and Volunteering

Patrick Butler has a piece about the use of volunteers, which raises some interesting points.  He cites reports about a surge in volunteering in Kensington and Chelsea.  However, it is not enough just having "volunteers" to help you in a generic sense.  You have to ask:

• Do the volunteers have the skills you need?  In the Kensington case, it appears the volunteers are looking to do a different kind of work to the one the charities need people to do.
• Do the organisations using the volunteers have the resources to manage and train them?  Managing volunteers can be more challenging than managing paid staff.  It requires input and is in that sense a cost.  Many of the "Big Society" ideas don't seem to recognise this, assuming that any sort of volunteers must be an addition.
• Do the volunteers meet minimum standards? For example, if you organise a rota of people to keep an office open, will everyone always turn up on time?

This is the sort of thing David Cameron's government appears not to have considered.