Do you sometimes feel your volunteers are more interested in chatting than getting anything done. Or you find occasionally that your thanks and praise seem to irritate some volunteers? Successful volunteer roles need to meet the needs of your organisation, and also engage and motivate your volunteers. How can you make roles so attractive that […]
What are volunteers to your organisation? At a recent training day one manager referred to volunteers as “the lifeblood of our organisation”. Pretty important then! People often refer to volunteers as “vital” or “essential” to the organisation. For some of you, volunteers are the “public face” of the organisation, for others they “make the engine […]
Do you involve your service users as volunteers? When we ask this question, the answer tends to vary from “yes, very much so” through to “well I think we could do more to involve service users”. At Swindon Mind the starting point for volunteering was to help meet their clients’ support needs through involving clients […]
Most heritage attractions work hard to increase the diversity and reach of their visitor offer. These efforts can also provide an opportunity to reach a more diverse group of potential volunteers. For example, outreach programmes provide an opportunity to raise awareness and potentially draw volunteers from community groups into the museum or heritage site itself. […]
You would normally include some kind of informal, yet structured interview as part of a volunteer recruitment process. An informal interview is a two way process. Prospective volunteers will be making judgements about whether they want to give their time to your organisation. You need to make a good impression on them, as well as […]
Volunteers give their time freely, but they still need to deliver what is needed by your service users, and uphold your organisation’s values and reputation. In return, you want to ensure that the volunteer will gain what they need from the role, whether it’s a sense of personal achievement, social involvement or help with their […]
We all know that volunteers don’t come forward for financial reward, but most people want to be recognised in other ways. The best volunteer managers and co-ordinators use a variety of approaches, tailoring them to the preferences of volunteers and the realities of the budget! In our training, we ask people to think about these […]
As a volunteer manager, should your professional development be focused on competencies, or strengths? Competencies are the things that you DO in your job, observable descriptions of behaviour. There is a national competency framework for the management of volunteers, the National Occupational Standards(1), and you may well work in an organisation with its own competencies. […]
Action Learning is a method of peer supported learning that is well suited to leadership and management development. It was founded by Professor Reg Revans, based on a simple idea – leaders and managers learn best by working together in a group (an “action learning set”) to help each other to find solutions to real […]