Sue Dunmore, 58, is the manager of Volunteer Centre Swindon, which puts people who want to volunteer in touch with people and organisations who need volunteers. She has vowed that the centre will continue in spite of the council cancelling its £35,000 annual funding contribution – a third of overall annual income. Sue lives in Chiseldon, is married and has a grown-up daughter

FROM litter picking to counting penguins in images supplied by scientists studying the zoology of Antarctica, Volunteer Centre Swindon has a role for anybody who wants one.

Some of its volunteers want or need a change from day-to-day life.

For others volunteering helps in their recovery from physical or psychological problems.

Still others begin volunteering to help with a university or job application, only to discover what becomes a lifelong passion.

More than 1,500 volunteers a year are helped by the organisation.

“Within the last week,” said Sue Dunmore, “I’ve been out to a group of people looking to move back into employment, who are looking at volunteering as a way of boosting their skills, their confidence, having something to put on their CV – references, all that type of thing.

“We’ve had an older person coming in, knowing they’ll be retiring fairly soon, and asking what they can do to remain active in older life.

“We’ve had a younger person coming in who’s doing some volunteering already. They’re at college, they’ve got a bit of extra spare time and they asked what else they could do.

“We get phone calls from people asking, ‘What can I do for the volunteering element of my Duke of Edinburgh Award?’ – absolutely anything and everybody.

“We work with charity shops – that’s the obvious one. We’ve got a whole raft of shops on board.

"We’ve got opportunities in a lot of befriending-type roles with organisations that support people with either a specific disability or perhaps who are older people.

"So we’ve got people like Wiltshire Sight, the RVS, Age UK, Swindon Carers, Swindon MIND. We’ve got things like helping with the Samaritans, Citizens’ Advice Bureau, MS Therapy Centre – all the big Swindon players.

“We’ve got a lot more of the community-based things like the local lunch clubs, just a couple of hours a week.

"We’ve got volunteering with nationally-based organisations that have roles taking place in Swindon, such as Save The Children. We’ve got links with the National Trust, who obviously have their head office in Heelis.

“There’s absolutely a whole raft of things.

“The other big area of our work is Involve Swindon, which we administer. It’s a partnership of the major corporate players in the town – the Intels, the Zurichs, the Nationwides and Thames Water.

“We source opportunities for their staff to volunteer. We’ve got the team challenges that everyone’s familiar with – the dig the garden, the paint the building – and last year we brokered 76 challenges that involved over 1,000 volunteers.

“We also brokered 18 skills-based opportunities, things like people donating their business skills to help a local charity.

"It could have been an IT solution, it could have been some advice around HR, it could have been marketing advice or delivering some very specific workshops in business planning or something like that.

“It’s been given a Big Society Award by the Cabinet Office.”

Ah yes, the Big Society. Sue acknowledges the irony of a council funding cut for an organisation which is the epitome of Big Society thinking, but is diplomatic.

“I appreciate that local authorities are being more and more stretched with their budgets. I think the way things are commissioned might not necessarily sit in the right portfolios,” she said.

In another irony, Volunteer Centre Swindon, an independent charity set up in 1999, points some of its would-be volunteers in the direction of the council, where they help with everything from libraries to Lydiard Park.

Sue and her small team are determined that the organisation will continue, and are optimistic about being part of a consortium currently trying to secure Big Lottery European Social Fund money.

“No two days are ever the same. You don’t know who the next volunteer will be, you don’t know who will be on the other end of the phone," she said.

“I love my job.”

Sue is originally from Plymouth. Her father was in the Royal Navy and her mother was a teacher.

At Sheffield University Sue studied history, a subject she finds endlessly fascinating. Other passions away from the workplace are France, gardening and cookery.

Her first job involved helping ex-offenders. She has worked as a market researcher, a product developer at St Ivel, as a charity shop manager and for Swindon Scrapstore, and has held her current job for eight years. She and her teacher husband came to Swindon for his career in 1981.

Sue has herself volunteered for organisations as diverse as the National Trust and her local pre-school, and is a firm believer that volunteering helps not just good causes but also the volunteers.

Volunteer Centre Swindon’s success stories include a young man who volunteered in the hope of securing a reduced sentence for a one-off offence, caught the volunteering bug and was last heard of working as a trustee of an organisation helping young offenders.

Another young person volunteered as part of a university application, eventually became a solicitor and now offers free legal help to needy causes.

Volunteering allowed a petty criminal and repeat offender to stay away from bad influences., saving the police and justice system countless hours and thousands of pounds.

Volunteer Centre Swindon is open on weekdays from 11am to 3pm and welcomes inquiries from volunteers, organisations in need of volunteers. Its website is swindonvolunteers.org.uk.

The organisation also welcomes inquiries from organisations offering funding.

“They will be supporting an organisation that is here to help local people and make a difference locally," said Sue.

“The funding would be used to support the volunteer brokerage service, helping people who want to help locally.”