The role of campaign days in volunteer engagement

Sunday, November 24th is the UK’s biggest day of interfaith volunteering. Tens of thousands of people from all walks of life are expected to take part in Mitzvah Day, a Jewish-led day of social action where people give time — to good causes in their local community.

Since 2005, Mitzvah Day has been helping tens of thousands of people — mostly in the UK but also around the world (in over 40 countries) — to give back to their communities. In Judaism a mitzvah is a religious commandment; an obligation a Jew is expected to uphold as part of their religious observance.

In Jewish culture more broadly however, the word has come to be synonymous with anybody who does a good deed for the sake of doing the right thing; not unlike the concept of being a ‘Good Samaritan’. Mitzvah Day is a day for coming together to do right by each other and show the world that we’re stronger together, focusing on what we have in common.

Whether they’re interfaith moments like Mitzvah Day or catch-all campaigns like The Big Help Out, campaigns like this have an important role to play in helping people volunteer. They give a rhythm to the year through a series of heartbeat moments (some big, some small) that invite people who might struggle to lend a hand due to a lack of time, experience or confidence to come and be part of something bigger.

Many of the events we support at Mitzvah Day are organised specially for the campaign. They’re opportunities for charities to go out of their way to invite new people into their spaces or test the appetite for a new way of helping out. For volunteers, it’s a chance to give back to their community knowing that their help will be actively welcomed and that they’ll be supported in taking part.

They also have the potential to create powerful moments of connection across social boundaries and build bridges between communities. Every Mitzvah Day hundreds of people get to discover not just charities led by Jewish values working on issues they’re passionate about but also experience by invitation a religion, culture and ways of life that they don’t encounter very often in their day-to-day lives.

And for charities, Mitzvah Day is an opportunity to build relationships with a community that is generous with its time for good causes. We find that projects that take part in Mitzvah Day often get ‘adopted’ by synagogues, community groups, schools or other Jewish organisations, leading to lasting collaboration.

Taking part in an event like Mitzvah Day isa great opportunity for charities to engage the kind of people who can’t give their time year round and a great moment for those of us with busier lives to set aside the time to do something good for the people we share in community with every day. With enough ‘Mitzvah moments’ throughout the year, we can help thousands of people to volunteer who might not otherwise feel able to do so.

Platforms like Doit also have an important role to play in acting as a public forum where campaigns like ours can get exposure, recruit volunteers and reach that diverse audience we need if we’re to realise our mission to prove that the UK is stronger together. That’s just one reason why Mitzvah Day chose to advertise our campaign this year via Doit Life’s improved volunteering app.

So please — this November 24th, join us in a day of social action by supporting one of our amazing 50+ participating charities if you’re a volunteer, organising your own day of social action in your community, or if you’re a charity partnering with us to do so!