This chapter focuses specifically on one group of people who are bringing those on the edge of community into their social networks – volunteers. It will use the lens of social capital to look specifically at how volunteering can build inclusive communities. A recent NFP Synergy publication notes that ‘volunteering, at its core, remains transformational. It transforms both the giver and the receiver’ (Saxton et al, 2015: 3). It is this contention that volunteering has a transformational effect on both the individuals involved (volunteers and beneficiaries) and society as a whole that this chapter explores.

Social capital is a multifaceted concept, and is a useful way of thinking about civil society: the space between government institutions and the market. Broadly speaking, social capital starts from the viewpoint that relationships matter: social networks are a way of creating cohesive communities that have shared norms and values, and facilitating cooperation within and between groups. Social science research has tended to favour either the civic tradition (Putnam, 2000) or the instrumental tradition (Bourdieu, 1983; Coleman, 1994) when speaking about changes and trends in society. These different approaches can best be described as: a civic good, how our social interactions build trust and reciprocity in the community; or an instrumental good, which brings individual-level goods such as improved health, access to jobs and so on through social interactions.

These two ways of understanding social capital are often set in opposition to each other, but this chapter will argue that it is possible to see a correlation between both a civic and an instrumental measure of social capital as civic engagements can directly produce instrumental capital when channelled in the right way, thus building both a public good (civic tradition) and a private good (instrumental tradition). It will argue that both can build communities and enhance existing levels of social capital by bringing those on the edge of our communities into the social networks enjoyed by those who already have strong community ties.

This will be illustrated through looking at volunteer-involving community programmes run by the Salvation Army in the UK that demonstrate the transformative power of volunteering in building social capital.