Bit of a ramble to follow - but stay with me if you can.
I volunteer as a Bloodrunner, I've been doing this since 2013. I do between 2 and 4 nights per month on call between 7pm and 6am, and a few daytime shouts at the weekends. The reason I do it is because thanks to the unselfish people who, back in 1984, donated blood for the benefit of others, one of my daughters survived severe illness in the early weeks of her life and is alive today. Her way of giving something back is by realising her own personal ambition to become a neo-natal paediatric nurse. Mine is to donate my own blood; and to give some of my time free of charge to the NHS Blood and Transplant Service by being a Bloodrunner.
In the region I cover, there are 120 volunteers. There's a long list of people waiting to get on board. We have a fleet of three vans and nine liveried bikes with racks fitted which any volunteer can borrow to use for duty. No blues and twos, but plenty of reflective stuff. Each bike is owned and insured by the charity, and its fuel and maintenance is paid for by the charity. In addition, we need to raise more than enough funds each year to replace two ageing bikes on the fleet with new FJR1300s - at a cost of about £30k.
Most volunteers however, use their own vehicles and bikes for duty; whereby we pay for our own fuel, insurance, tax, maintenance etc. All I needed to do was make my insurance company aware that I was a volunteer Bloodrunner. No additional insurance cost - in fact, the IAM qualification got me a premium discount at renewal this year. I have a rack which takes five minutes to fit, and to remove, from my own bike (FJR1300). There is no permanent alteration to the standard bike.
The IAM or RoSPA advanced rider qualification is to become a mandatory requirement in our region, for reasons of risk mitigation. The charity's insurers have become more risk averse in this increasing 'litigation chasing' culture, so the liability cover and charity-owned vehicle insurance cover costs more. Same principle applies if you want to organise a school fete or a fun run - it costs more to insure nowadays unless you mitigate the risks.
The charity announced in June 2019 that serving volunteer riders without the advanced qualification, would have until 31 December 2020 (18 months) to pass the test; after which date anyone without it would not be able to continue to ride as a volunteer. We were given the choice to either train and test, or cease Bloodrunning after 31/12. Everyone without the advanced already, has signed up to train and test.
The charity paid the first 12 month subscription for IAM associate membership and the test fee. So all it cost me, was two or three hours of my time per week for 20 weeks to benefit from one-to-one riding instruction, the fuel and tyre rubber I burnt (!) doing that, and a tenner a week in the volunteer observer's pocket to pay for his fuel. I passed my advanced test in December 2019 on a two hour examination ride in the pissing rain on a dark evening, under observation from a Police master. Again, a volunteer doing it in his own time. I learned more good stuff about riding in those 20 weeks than I had learned in the previous 20 years. It transformed my riding for the better.
During my covid furlough March to July this year, I volunteered to deliver prescription drugs to the homes of shielded cancer patients, and to deliver PPE from the regional logistics hub to hospitals, surgeries and care homes within a radius of up to 50 miles. I clocked up about 1600 miles while doing that - I met some wonderful, fascinating, desperately ill and desperately lonely people, many of whom were gagging for someone - anyone - to chat to. Otherwise, I would have been sitting on my arse at home, watching daytime telly and picking my feet.
Bloodrunning - I love doing it, always have, and I will keep on doing it as long as I can. It is tremendously rewarding for me but I accept - different strokes for different folks. I'm due an advanced re-test in December 2021 and I am looking forward to doing some refresher training and passing it again. It will be at my expense next time, but I consider it a worthwhile investment.
I admit to being an old git. Personally, I'm averse to mixing with other old gits that ride motorcycles because largely, they get on my foccin' nerves, for the very same reasons that some of you have expressed above. So I choose to steer clear of them, it's not difficult to do. Passing the IAM or RoSPA advanced test does not commit you to any sort of social mixing with other members of those organisations.