Micro-volunteering has been heralded as a way to benefit a worthy cause on your own terms to suit your lifestyle with ‘absolutely no commitment’. Can this really be true?

• Recruitment of events manager will boost activity for training and development of volunteer managers
• Growth in AVM activity will support growing demand for support and development of volunteer manager professionalisation

The Association of Volunteer Managers (AVM) has recruited its first full-time employee as an events manager.

We would like to thank our clients and partners for inspiring us to keep researching the topical issues in the sector. As part of our Social Investment programme we regularly produce Free Reports and feed our finding back to the sector so any charity regardless its size or sector can find something useful. Here are the 12 popular reports this  year.

What is the best way to provide care to a stranger? Anna Chistyakova explores available options and possibilities to help a homeless person and finds herself overwhelmed, yet is not convinced what she should be doing as a giver

Our new volunteering data is in, so nfpSynergy researcher Amina Ali explores why some people are unable to volunteer and how charities can help solve the problem.

As it's the season of goodwill, we're giving away The 12 Insights of Christmas. They look at some of the key issues facing the charity sector and include research, interviews and advice from charities and from us. Unwrap our 12 free reports just in time for Christmas.

1. A Hidden Gem - Resilience report from the Clore Social Leadership Programme

This briefing looks at how government measures the levels of volunteering in the UK (and touches on measurements of civic participation) and suggests there are a number of ways in which the current research methodology is over-estimating the level of volunteers.

This briefing looks at some results from nfpSynergy's Charity Awareness Monitor to analyse volunteering trends over the last 7 years. While volunteering levels have remained fairly constant, the demographics of volunteers have changed.

Not for profit think-tank nfpSynergy has teamed up with The ImpACT Coalition to produce a free, short, practical report and guide that will empower charities to formulate and communicate simple messages, including pithy pub facts, needed to dispel a range of debilitating misperceptions their stakeholders may have, both about themselves and the wider third sector.