Tag: volunteer strategy

Heritage Volunteer Strategy

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On 22nd March 2023

In Heritage & Culture, News & Views, Volunteer Management

As mentioned in a previous blog, one of the challenges heritage organisations face is a lack of volunteer strategy across heritage organisations.

A report from The Heritage Volunteering Group, states that 45% of heritage organisations in the UK depend on volunteer work that is critical to their operations but 40% of them have no volunteering strategy.

Volunteers make a significant strategic contribution to heritage organisations, delivering results that support the organisation’s ambitions around community engagement, diversity and inclusion. To achieve this, leadership teams need to become more engaged with the strategic development of volunteering. In the report, they make a key recommendation that volunteer engagement, and support for volunteering, needs to become more strategic.

Writing a strategy 

A volunteer strategy is simply a strategy your organisation writes that shows what you want to accomplish with volunteering and how you are going to achieve it. The report from The Heritage Volunteering Group suggests that as a heritage organisation, you should develop a strategy as it will help with your volunteer engagement. 

Your approach to volunteering is key to include in your strategy. To access this, create a questionnaire for your current volunteers so you can collect evidence to help you access your approach. Questions to the volunteers could include what the organisation could improve on, why they got involved in volunteering for the organisation, skills gained from volunteering or reasons for continuing to volunteer. This research can help you to create an accurate aim of volunteering within your organisation. It can also help you produce an effective and engaging volunteering programme. 

Ensure to include in your strategy how volunteers will contribute to your organisation’s aims and how your organisation plan to recruit and support them. Include the missions that your organisation want to aim for with the help of volunteers. This could be promoting inclusivity and diversity within your volunteer programme. One of the aims of The Royal Parks volunteer strategy is to create learning opportunities for volunteers to provide expert training which will help to support volunteers.

A final key point to think about is how your organisation plans to deliver the strategy. Include an estimation of how long the strategy will take to be delivered and then review your strategy on an annual basis so you can respond to challenges and trends your organisation might face.

Some good examples of a volunteer strategy are from The Royal Parks and George House Trust, which will provide you with plenty of inspiration for your strategy.

 

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Creating A Volunteer Strategy

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On 2nd November 2022

In News & Views, Volunteer Management

A volunteering strategy sets out what you want to achieve with volunteering and how you want to do it. A strategy articulates what needs to be done to achieve the purpose of an organisation, group, programme, and so on. Creating a strategy is important as it explains how volunteers will contribute to the organisation’s aims. It can also include how it will find, recruit and support volunteers. The strategy helps everyone understand your vision for volunteers and why you’re involving them.

You may think being a busy Volunteer Manager that you may not have the time to write a strategy however a well-thought-out strategy may save you time in the long run and be beneficial to your organisation. 

Important Things To Consider When Writing A Strategy 

Important things to consider when writing your strategy are speaking to others in your organisation and taking a look at some important resources to help you. Engaging with everyone and having lots of collaboration and feedback is necessary when writing the strategy so use the opinions of others in your organisation. People to include could be paid staff within your organisation or existing volunteers as they may have valuable suggestions.

To ensure your strategy supports your organisation’s aims, you should think about the following questions NCVO have put together as useful advice when writing a strategy. 

Think about these questions when writing your strategy

After you have created your strategy it is essential to review it. Reviewing your strategy will help you respond to trends and changes in volunteering. You should do this annually with the people you consulted when you initially wrote it to see if it is still up to date with your organisation’s aims and if there are any other suggestions for it.

Useful Resources To Help You Write Your Volunteer Strategy

Volunteer Scotland runs a one-day course on, “Developing a Volunteer Strategy”. This includes learning an understanding of how to put together a strategy, having time to reflect on what is needed and preparatory work. Volunteer Scotland also has a list of suggested useful resources for developing an effective volunteer strategy which can be found here. 

NCVO have some useful resources including reports and research about volunteering and the voluntary sector to help you write your strategy. You can also bring in an external consultant to help develop your strategy. To find out how NCVO consultancy can help your organisation you can fill in their short online enquiry form.

There are also some examples of volunteer strategies available which may help guide you, however, strategies must be unique and tailored to the needs and ambitions of the organisation. Royal Parks have a volunteering strategy that may be useful which can be found here and a volunteering strategy agreed by the city’s public agencies and the third sector produced by Edinburgh Compact can be found here. 

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