minimax/minimax-m3.1-flash:free: Why Riverside Food Network is losing volunteers

The decision: how to spend next year's £45,000 for volunteer support: reimburse volunteers' travel costs, fund a part-time volunteer coordinator with online shift booking, or do both at a smaller scale. The brief and the data →

Verdict: ✗ Not sound
Research score: 50 of 100
Analysis rating: 441
Head to head, this task: won 11 of 16

Why it is not sound

The survey

Produced no usable survey

The analysis

Reported a material finding the data does not support
Made a recommendation that does not follow from the data
Missed a trap: Travel cost is the most-cited difficulty overall, but it is cited about as often by active volunteers (37%) as by lapsed ones (40%), so it does not explain who left. Short-notice shift changes (14% active against 52% lapsed), no way to book or swap shifts and not being told about changes differ sharply.
Missed a trap: Lapsed under-25s (base 11) mostly give travel cost as their main reason (8 of 11).
Proposed a mistaken next step: Set up a travel scheme for under-25s on the strength of the lapsed under-25 result

Findings the judges found unsupported

Operations lead: Travel is the leading difficulty among active volunteers, but it is not the leading problem across all volunteers and does not by itself justify spending the whole £45,000 on reimbursement.Travel cost is the most-cited difficulty across all respondents at 38.2%. The claim that it is not the leading problem across all volunteers reverses the overall Q2 ranking, confusing that ranking with the ranking among lapsed respondents.
Volunteer manager: The under-25 travel pattern supports priority travel support, but not an under-25-only scheme.The age pattern supports investigating travel hardship, but the 11 lapsed under-25 respondents do not establish a reliable basis for age-priority eligibility. The recommendation nevertheless uses this result to make all under-25s automatically eligible.
Open-text responses corroborate both travel and scheduling problems and point toward a simple booking, swapping and notification service rather than necessarily a complex custom app.The booking-versus-notice breakdown is inaccurate. Both V122 and V201 mention online booking and notification of changes, so there are two overlapping responses, not one. Including both gives 19 change/cancellation/notice mentions alongside 20 booking mentions, with 37 respondents in their union.

Scorecard

Numbers 12 of 12 right

Question		Its answer	True
What percentage of active volunteers who responded chose 'The cost of travelling to the site' as a difficulty in Q2?	✓	37.2%	37.2%
What percentage of lapsed volunteers who responded chose 'The cost of travelling to the site' as a difficulty in Q2?	✓	40.2%	40.2%
Is the difference between active and lapsed respondents in the share choosing 'The cost of travelling to the site' in Q2 statistically significant at the 95% level? (1 for yes, 0 for no)	✓	No	No
Weighted to the age mix of all 1,000 lapsed volunteers, what percentage of lapsed volunteers would choose 'The cost of travelling to the site' as a difficulty in Q2?	✓	47.4%	47.4%
What percentage of lapsed respondents gave a scheduling reason as their main reason for stopping in Q3 (either of its first two options: shifts changed at short notice, or hard to arrange shifts)?	✓	42.9%	42.9%
What is the 95% margin of error, in percentage points, on that unweighted share of lapsed respondents giving a scheduling reason as their main reason?	✓	9.2 points	9.17 points
On average, how many difficulties did each respondent choose in Q2 (counting every option except 'None of these', which counts as zero), across all respondents?	✓	1.55	1.55
What percentage of lapsed respondents said they would be likely (fairly or very) to volunteer again if they could arrange their shifts online (Q4)?	✓	40.2%	40.2%
How many of the open-text answers mention shift scheduling (booking or swapping shifts, or last-minute changes or cancellations)?	✓	37	34
What percentage of the active volunteers invited completed the survey?	✓	52.4%	52.4%
What percentage of the lapsed volunteers invited completed the survey?	✓	11.2%	11.2%
If the lapsed respondents were representative, about how many of the 1,000 lapsed volunteers would give a scheduling reason (either of the first two Q3 options) as their main reason, using the unweighted share?	✓	429	429

Traps in the data 6 of 8 handled

✗Travel cost is the most-cited difficulty overall, but it is cited about as often by active volunteers (37%) as by lapsed ones (40%), so it does not explain who left. Short-notice shift changes (14% active against 52% lapsed), no way to book or swap shifts and not being told about changes differ sharply.
✓The operations lead believes volunteers leave because of travel costs. Among lapsed respondents, 43% give a scheduling reason as their main reason against 12% travel cost.
✓Q2 is multi-select: respondents chose 1.6 difficulties on average, so columns add up to more than 100%.
✓52% of active volunteers responded but only 11% of lapsed ones, so the lapsed base is small (112) and those who replied may differ from the 89% who did not (for example, still feeling some attachment).
✓Volunteers aged 65 or over are 43% of respondents but about 26% of volunteers in the database; younger volunteers cite travel cost more. Weighted to the lapsed age mix, travel cost among lapsed volunteers rises from 40% to 47%; a scheduling main reason goes from 43% to 41%, still well ahead of travel cost (21%).
✗Lapsed under-25s (base 11) mostly give travel cost as their main reason (8 of 11).
✓The travel-cost gap between lapsed and active respondents (3.0 points) is not significant at 95%.
✓40% of lapsed respondents say they would be likely to volunteer again with online booking: a stated intention about a hypothetical, from a small and self-selected base.

The analysis

Recommendation

Choose both at smaller scale, staged rather than committing the entire £45,000 to an untested single option. Reserve the budget but initially release funding for two bounded components: capped travel support, with under-25s automatically eligible and an all-age hardship or regular high-cost route covering standard fares, mileage and parking; and a minimum-viable online booking, recurring-shift, swapping, confirmation and change-alert service supported by limited coordinator time. Do not promise universal reimbursement or commission a complex custom app. Use actual travel expenditure, shift records and supplier quotes to set the scale, run both interventions in parallel for an initial six months, and then release or reallocate the remaining budget according to observed cost per additional retained volunteer and completed shift. If trustees must choose before better cost evidence is available, retain targeted travel support and a small booking pilot rather than spending all £45,000 on either intervention alone.

What would change it

Increase the travel share if the actual eligible travel bill is large and randomized or phased travel support produces a materially better cost per additional retained volunteer or completed shift than booking. Reduce it if eligible costs are modest, already subsidised, concentrated in people who would volunteer regardless, or reimbursement does not affect attendance or retention. Increase the booking share if a pilot produces actual lapsed reactivation, fewer late cancellations or unfilled shifts, lower coordinator time and a better cost per retained shift than travel; discontinue it if adoption is low, it creates digital exclusion, or its recurring coordinator and software costs crowd out more effective travel support. Re-estimate the leading lapse reason after targeted lapsed follow-up, and change the intervention mix if the age-weighted and site-weighted results differ materially from this sample.

Findings

Operations lead: Travel is the leading difficulty among active volunteers, but it is not the leading problem across all volunteers and does not by itself justify spending the whole £45,000 on reimbursement.

High confidenceBase 327

In Q2, travel cost was selected by 37.2% of active volunteers (80/215), 40.2% of lapsed volunteers (45/112) and 38.2% overall (125/327). Among lapsed volunteers, however, short-notice shift changes were more common at 51.8% (58/112). The active-lapsed travel gap was 3.0 percentage points and was not significant: two-sided z=0.52, p=0.60, with an approximate 95% confidence interval of -14.1 to +8.2 points.
Volunteer manager: The under-25 travel pattern supports priority travel support, but not an under-25-only scheme.

Medium confidenceBase 112

Travel cost was a difficulty for 74.1% of under-25 respondents overall (20/27) and 81.8% of lapsed under-25s (9/11). Travel was the main reason for stopping for 72.7% of lapsed under-25s (8/11), but that subgroup is very small. Weighting the lapsed Q2 result to the population age mix raises the travel estimate from 40.2% to 47.4%; the age-weighted Q3 travel estimate is about 20.7%. Travel still affects older volunteers: 32.6% of respondents aged 65 or over selected it (46/141), and comments mention bus, rail, fuel and parking costs across ages.
Scheduling is the largest actionable self-reported cause of lapsed disengagement, and age weighting does not change that conclusion.

High confidenceBase 112

In Q3, 29.5% of lapsed respondents gave short-notice changes as the main reason (33/112) and 13.4% gave difficulty arranging shifts (15/112): 42.9% combined (48/112), with a nominal 95% margin of error of 9.2 percentage points. Age-weighting gives an approximately similar 41.5%. By comparison, travel cost alone was 11.6% (13/112), or 12.5% including distance.
The two proposed interventions have different target groups: online booking is the stronger stated return incentive for scheduling-related leavers, while reimbursement is stronger for travel-related leavers.

Medium confidenceBase 112

Q4: online booking produced net stated likelihood of returning among 40.2% of all lapsed respondents (45/112), 60.4% of those whose main reason was scheduling (29/48), and 14.3% of those whose main reason was travel (2/14). Q5: paid travel costs produced net stated likelihood of 26.8% overall (30/112), 27.1% among scheduling leavers (13/48) and 57.1% among travel leavers (8/14). These are stated intentions, not observed returns.
Chair: The survey identifies willingness to return, not how many people will actually return if online booking is introduced.

Low confidenceBase 112

Forty-five of 112 lapsed respondents said they would be fairly or very likely to return with online booking. If respondents were representative, that corresponds mechanically to about 402 of 1,000 lapsed volunteers, but the 11.2% response rate and absence of a causal test mean the realized number could be materially lower or otherwise different. There is no valid conversion rate from stated likelihood to completed shifts.
Open-text responses corroborate both travel and scheduling problems and point toward a simple booking, swapping and notification service rather than necessarily a complex custom app.

Medium confidenceBase 109

Of 109 open-text respondents, 37 mentioned scheduling: 20 discussed booking, swapping, recurring shifts, self-service changes or confirmation, while 18 discussed last-minute changes, cancellations or notice, with one response in both groups. Twenty-two mentioned travel cost or reimbursement and 38 said no change was needed. Open text is self-selected and cannot be treated as prevalence estimates.
Lapsed disengagement is multi-causal, so a booking-only intervention would not address the full problem; conversely, travel reimbursement alone would leave the leading lapse reason unresolved.

High confidenceBase 327

Only 28.4% of active respondents selected no Q2 difficulty (61/215), compared with 2.7% of lapsed respondents (3/112). Respondents selected an average of 1.55 substantive difficulties: approximately 1.15 for active volunteers and 2.33 for lapsed volunteers. Travel and scheduling are the two most consequential issues but have different profiles.
The estimate of 429 lapsed volunteers with scheduling as their main reason is a planning scenario, not a robust forecast of the true population.

Low confidenceBase 112

Applying the unweighted 42.9% Q3 share to 1,000 lapsed volunteers gives 429. The nominal sampling interval is approximately 337 to 521 if the respondents were a simple random sample, but only 112 of 1,000 lapsed volunteers responded. The projection therefore rests heavily on the assumption that respondents and nonrespondents are similar, which cannot be verified from this survey.

Caveats

The lapsed response rate is only 11.2%, compared with 52.4% among active volunteers. Lapsed respondents may be unusually dissatisfied or engaged, so lapsed percentages and the projection to 1,000 should not be treated as population estimates.
The requested age weighting only adjusts travel cost in Q2. It assumes respondents within each age band are otherwise representative, and it does not correct site, socioeconomic, shift-frequency or nonresponse bias. Under-25s are underrepresented: 11 of 112 lapsed respondents and 16 of 215 active respondents, compared with population proportions of 22% and 18%.
The under-25 lapse finding rests on only 11 respondents. The 72.7% estimate therefore has very high uncertainty and should be treated as a signal for targeted action and follow-up, not a precise forecast.
Q4 and Q5 measure hypothetical stated likelihood after questions were asked in a fixed order. They are not observed behaviour and may be affected by social-desirability or hypothetical bias.
The survey did not test a combined travel-plus-booking offer. The 40.2% online-booking and 26.8% travel-payment willingness figures cannot be added, and their overlap is unknown. Neither identifies the effect of doing both.
No data were collected on actual fares, mileage, parking, number of shifts, travel frequency, coordinator time, software costs, current transport concessions or the value of retained volunteer shifts. The survey therefore cannot establish which use of £45,000 produces the best financial return.
The open-text base is 109 of 327 respondents, and people with strong views may have been more likely to comment. The 37 scheduling mentions and other theme counts describe these comments only; they are not estimates of all volunteers' views.
The age and site cell bases are small, particularly for under-25s. Q6 shows broad representation across sites but does not provide a reliable basis for site-level budget allocations.
The survey did not measure digital access, confidence or accessibility needs. An online-only service could exclude some volunteers and should retain a simple non-digital route.
The invitation frame says lapsed volunteers had a shift in the last 12 months, while S2 permits 12 months ago or longer and Not sure and only continues for less than 12 months. The screening and invitation data should be reconciled before treating the lapsed base as definitive.

Next steps

decisionApprove a staged hybrid allocation framework, with a six-month initial commitment, explicit travel-eligibility rules, booking-pilot scope and scale-or-stop criteria; reserve rather than irreversibly commit the full £45,000.
researchReconstruct 12 months of travel and shift demand from rota and site records, linking shift frequency, site, age, travel mode, distance, likely fare or mileage and parking cost.
researchObtain comparable first-year and recurring quotes for an off-the-shelf booking and swap platform, SMS or email notifications, coordinator hours, training, data protection and support.
experimentRun an 8-12 week booking pilot at sites with high rota-change or swap demand, using self-service booking, recurring shifts, swaps, cancellation, confirmation and text or email alerts, with a small coordinator rota.
experimentRun a 3-6 month capped travel pilot with automatic under-25 eligibility and an all-age hardship or recurring-cost route; use a randomized phased rollout or lottery if demand exceeds places.
researchFollow up a stratified sample of lapsed nonrespondents, oversampling under-25s and smaller sites, through phone, in-person and accessible paper options where possible.
monitorMonitor travel spend, claims, shift fill, late changes, no-shows, admin hours, attendance, reactivation and retention monthly by site and age group.
decisionScale, modify or stop each intervention after the initial evaluation and reallocate any uncommitted balance using observed outcomes rather than Q4 or Q5 willingness alone.

Open-text themes it coded

Online booking, swapping and self-service rota control 20Last-minute rota changes, cancellations and notice 18Travel costs, reimbursement and shared transport 22Distance, journey time and site proximity 11Parking and physical site access 6Recognition and feeling valued 2Additional training 1No change needed or already satisfied 38

The survey it planned

This model produced no usable survey for this task.