The 1st of June is important to us for two big reasons – 1) It is the start of Volunteers’ Week and 2) It is the start of our new financial year at The Cyber Helpline.

Volunteer’s Week, 1st to 7th of June, is an annual celebration of the contribution millions of people make across the UK through volunteering. At The Cyber Helpline we are 100% staffed by volunteers, so we literally could not survive without them.

The 1st of June 2020 also marks the start of our 3rd financial year and we are very excited by what this next year will hold.

Our volunteers are incredible!

Really incredible! They have an in demand set of skills and work long hours, but still find the time to either help victims of cybercrime or help us operate The Cyber Helpline on top of their personal lives. Of our 50 or so volunteers many are frontline Helpline Responders, working directly with victims to help them contain and recover. However, we also have volunteers in areas like marketing, human resources, information security, learning & development and safeguarding. It takes a wide range of skills to operate and grow a not-for-profit like us.

The year ahead

In the year just closed our case volume grew 320%! Our chatbot handled 282% more cases than it did the previous year. In total, we have dealt with more than 1,250 cases. We are growing. Fast.

The year ahead looks exciting. We hope to reach as many of the UK’s cyber security victims as possible. There are still a large number of victims every month who don’t know about us and can’t seek our help. We have lots of ideas and plans on how we can reach these individuals.

We have three key focus areas for the year ahead:

1. Raising awareness of our service in the UK so we can help as many people as possible.

2. Developing our internal maturity & ability to scale.

3. Ensuring we have the right level of funding to operate effectively.

A massive thank you to all volunteers

Whether you volunteer at The Cyber Helpline, one of our partners or for another organisation we would like to say a massive thank you. The time you give up keeps people safe, teaches them new skills and helps provide opportunity they couldn’t otherwise take advantage of.

If would haven’t embarked on your volunteer career yet, sites like Do-It are a great place to find the opportunity that might suit you.

Keep up the good work!