Volunteers were drawn almost entirely from the upper-middle class in the earlier years, and this posed a few problems. ‘The Training of Volunteers’, written in 1895, states:
‘The training of volunteers must go very much further, if the Society’s aims are to be accomplished… It is manifest that the comparatively small number of persons of leisure that are available can only form a nucleus of workers in large areas, often very far distant from their homes… It must be admitted that among the ranks of volunteers are many who do not care to work seriously, of whose help a fair show may be made, but on whose regularity and conscientiousness little reliance can be placed.’
The writer goes on to suggest that volunteers should be increasingly drawn from the local working class residents, but those working/trading class men who were prepared to contribute their limited leisure time preferred to join trade unions or Friendly Societies.
Over time large numbers of middle class women volunteered:
"‘…the number of women who train themselves with a view to undertaking systematic charitable work in London and elsewhere, in connection with, or apart from the Society, has increased…’
COS Annual Report, 1900
Southwark Annual Report, 1900: ‘Training new workers is a recognised duty of the Secretaries, and they are glad to have so many fresh helpers – chiefly from the Women’s University Settlement…but it must be remembered that beginners are an anxiety rather than an assistance just at first, and too often leave us when they have become really useful volunteers.’
The COS learned to train volunteers in the areas they were most interested in, and therefore best suited to.
After World War One the COS found it much harder to recruit volunteers. The pattern of social and economic life had changed, there were fewer middle class men and women with money and time to spare. Young women sought to equip themselves to earn independent income, and had a wider choice of paid posts available.
‘The COS is feeling the after-effects of the war, both in the increase of the workload upon it and in the lack of volunteers. Many causes contribute to this dearth of volunteer workers; most obvious is the general lowering of incomes and contraction of the leisured class. But there are other reasons…there is the unwillingness to do unpaid work of the young women who tasted during the war the delights of earning money, an unwillingness which must not unfairly be labelled as merely selfish.’The Annual Review 1921