In the space of a few weeks of coronavirus lockdown, England has acquired a million-strong network of social volunteers – surpassing demand and prompting speculation: is this a new sign of social solidarity, and can the newly acquired community spirit survive? The extraordinary popularity of the NHS volunteer scheme, which 750,000 people signed up to using a phone app, three times as many as were expected, has been repeated at the country’s volunteer centres, which have registered an estimated 250,000 extra people in the past few weeks. Those numbers come on the back of the astonishing rise of informal mutual aid “good neighbour” organisations – hyper-local groups that keep volunteers in touch via social media. There are more than 4,300 such groups connecting an estimated 3 million people. “A lot of the popularity of volunteering is about people trying to get a degree of agency and control in their life when they feel so helpless. Somehow, staying at home, even though that is the main thing you can do to help, does not feel enough,” said Jackie Rosenberg, the chief executive of One Westminster community action, which has had about 2,500 applicants in recent weeks. While a typical volunteer centre would anticipate about 100 new applicants in the course of a normal March, many have reported being overwhelmed in recent weeks by demand from thousands of people keen to offer their services to the community for free. Staffordshire volunteer centre has been receiving up to 100 inquiries a day from potential volunteers. Croydon Volunteer Centre signed up 900 in the first two weeks of April. Cornwall has had more than 3,000 inquiries over the past month, and Dorset more than 1,000. Havering volunteer centre in Romford, Essex took half a year’s volunteers in 10 days. Volunteering Matters, a national volunteer charity, reported that 3,000 people had applied to its website in the past fortnight alone. It normally expects about 20 to 30 applications a week. It has also had more than 80 businesses come forward to volunteer. The surfeit of volunteers has come at a point where lockdown and physical distancing mean there is a relatively limited range of activities they can do. Most available roles cover shopping, dog walking, food parcel packing, patient transport and “check and chat” phone calls with older people in self-isolation. There is speculation that England now has more volunteers that it has roles for, with some people on the NHS scheme complaining that they have not had enough to do. The Royal Voluntary Service (RVS), which runs the scheme, said it was too early to say whether there were too many or too few volunteers and no one should worry about not being given tasks. Before the coronavirus outbreak, volunteer levels had barely shifted nationally for years. There is now hope that one of the legacies of the pandemic will be an injection of relative youth into what had become a largely older-age volunteer community. The recruitment of volunteers on this scale has not been seen in the UK since the second world war, when more than 1 million registered with the RVS to help with the evacuation of children from the cities during the Blitz. There have been some smaller voluntary efforts though, for example, the 70,000 who helped with the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. “It’s by no means unique. You do see these outbursts of desire to help your neighbour,” said Dr Justin Davis-Smith, a senior lecturer in voluntary sector management at Cass Business School. “There’s a real tradition of volunteering, which comes out of national stress and tension.” Jane Ide, the chief executive of NAVCA, said: “To know that around a quarter of a million people have made themselves available to the thousands of local charities and voluntary groups working right on the frontline of supporting those in need is a powerful sign that even in the face of a crisis that affects every one of us, the human desire to help others is unquenchable.” It is too early to know whether the million new volunteers will stay active – the Olympic mini-surge lasted two years before returning to normal levels – and wise heads know that managing a large community of new volunteers, all eager for action straight away, is never straightforward. But, for now, they have the capacity and energy to spare.