Elisabeth Hoodless's manner is friendly and attentive, although I suspect that she has answered my questions about her background and approach to volunteering a thousand times before. I also suspect that she can be steelier when putting CSV's point of view to a Government minister.

"In my experience 90 per cent of people if asked properly and reasonably to volunteer will respond," she tells me. Ninety per cent! I'm staggered. I thought most of us were out for Number One, I reply. "No, Professor Peter White of the Maudesley and Barts Hospital has actually written a paper which was published in New Society on the biological urge to help. He says that every human being needs to be able to help someone, but some people suppress that need better than others.

"And did you know that half the population are volunteers?" she continues. "Half the other 50 per cent say that they would volunteer if only someone would ask them." Amazing statistics. So does she consider it one of her main challenges to get out there and ask them? "Yes." She beams. Of course.

I have to assume from her impressive CV and our chat that Dame Elisabeth Hoodless (she was made a Dame in the 2004 New Year's Honours List) has been blessed with a unique focus. This focus has been unwavering over 40 years, yet has been able to spread itself across the huge range of projects and initiatives CSV has undertaken - without any dilution of her enthusiasm or sense of purpose.

Community Service Volunteers was originally set up by Dr Alec Dickson following his earlier work in setting up VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas). Elisabeth, a 22-year-old graduate from LSE and a trained medical social worker, was engaged to be married to Donald Hoodless when she saw an ad for someone to work with volunteers.

"It paid less than social work, but I would have the title Assistant Director and at that young age it sounded grand! I applied, got the job and never left." In answer to my unspoken question she adds quickly, "It's not that I haven't looked for other opportunities - I've just never seen anything that seemed as interesting."

She did not impress her social work lecturers who had been at pains to warn her that unpaid volunteering was letting the professional side down. "I got the message all right!" she laughs, "but it intrigued me. To be a volunteer was seen as slightly suspicious. I thought, this volunteering business must be more interesting than I'd at first imagined! Today you don't need to explain yourself - volunteering's as normal as going to the pictures."

In 1963 Elisabeth was the only paid member of staff - the director himself was a volunteer. Today as Executive Director she presides over an organisation of 780 employees and an annual turnover of £33 million. Wherever you look - in schools, libraries, hospitals, prisons, parks, health centres, homeless hostels - CSV volunteers have performed some small miracle, "lengthening and strengthening" (as she puts it) the work of hard-stretched staff.

"One of the strengths of volunteering is the luxury of focus which sets volunteers apart from paid staff who are always responsible for a number of people. Take teachers with a class of 30-plus children - a volunteer spending an hour a week with a child in a school can raise their reading age a year in a term."

She relates how some years ago Kent County Council refused to stump up more money for home helps. The director of social services turned to CSV for volunteers. "We said we wouldn't send volunteers to replace paid home helps and I remember discussing this with NUPE - we work very closely with trades unions, by the way. The home helps' hours remained as they were, but volunteers began to help them and the scheme was a great success. Two people helping each other with tasks like bed-making got twice as much done and it was more pleasant for the home helps to have company."

Social workers have a huge caseload and it is in response to this and recent tragic child abuse cases that CSV Volunteers in Child Protection has been created. Partnerships with social services in Bromley and Sunderland aim to help families on the child protection register. Volunteers are being screened, trained and matched to families with a child at risk, whom they will visit daily and provide practical help. Similar projects in the US have been shown to reduce child abuse with these 'at risk' families by almost 38 per cent.

Something to offer

One of the cornerstones of CSV's policy is the belief that everyone has something to offer as a volunteer and that no one who offers their time should be turned away. The other is that volunteering should be face-to-face with people in need. As a result volunteering becomes very much a two-way street with tremendous benefits for the volunteer as well as for those being helped.

"Several authors including Mark Haddonk would never have thought of writing if they hadn't become volunteers," Elisabeth says. "In fact, Mark Haddon felt he had got more out of the experience of volunteering, through learning about himself, than he was able to give to others."

"But volunteering has to be made attractive for volunteers," Elisabeth points out with emphasis. "Opportunities need to be attractive and purposeful and recruitment has to be done the right way." There are still organisations, she says, that demand far too much commitment of volunteers or ignore the tentative offers to help that might come their way.

"We need to get our marketing right. Why not appeal for people who can help one evening a month, not a huge commitment that many fear. Put up an invitation to an open evening to come along, meet other volunteers and see if they might like to help. People will find out quickly if it's for them or not. And, very important, volunteers should be thanked for whatever they do.