Impact

Short-term impact

The direct result of our work to improve the quantity and quality of student social action and volunteering is that there are many more students engaged in their communities. Over the next two years we will facilitate volunteering, activism, fundraising, learning and philanthropy amongst our growing network of over 14,000 students, which means many more students making a positive difference in their communities.

Further, our work will build the capacity of student groups and small charities and social enterprises - which often lack the resources to achieve their goals.

Much of our immediate impact in the community will be driven by our community volunteering work in Oxford, as the immediate benefits that the 1,400 student volunteers will bring to the community are both manifold and obvious. We also aim to start actively supporting community volunteering in other Hubs over the next two years – which will have a substantial impact on local communities across the UK.

Long-term impact

We are very proud of the significant community impact of our work in the short-term. Yet ultimately everything that we do aims to achieve widespread impact in the long term. This is evident in two ways.

Firstly, many of our community volunteering projects work with young people – helping to increase their self-confidence, life skills and education levels. Our work has significant impact, because of the unique benefits of these young people interacting with university students, particularly in terms of raising their aspirations.

Secondly, we are working to bring about a culture change within UK higher education institutions; to create a culture of giving back so that students develop not only as world-class thinkers but also as world-class citizens. As we move towards this goal we believe that there will be significant and very tangible benefits for society, as the students with which we engage create social value throughout their lives and careers.

A significant body of research provides powerful proof that volunteering has positive effects on students' civic and social values and behaviour. Students become more strongly committed to: helping others and serving their communities, promoting racial understanding, and doing volunteer work and working for non-profit organizations. They also become less inclined to feel that they have little power to change society. Thus it has been shown that how much a student volunteers during college has a very “clear and substantial effect on how much that student volunteers after college” – and thus “the importance of colleges…to volunteering cannot be overstated”.

Theory of Change

This video explains the Student Hubs theory of change: empower students now and, as the leaders and thinkers of tomorrow, they will go onto to have a positive social impact in the future.