In 8 easy steps
tips and advice on involving volunteers in your organisation
Basic guidelines if you’re considering involving volunteers for the first time OR if you want to quickly review the existing involvement of volunteers in your group's work.
Volunteering is “the commitment of time and energy by individuals for the benefit of the community, society, the environment or individuals outside one’s immediate family. It is undertaken freely and by choice, without personal financial gain.”
These guidelines set out a step-by-step approach to involving volunteers in groups/organisations operating in Scotland, UK. They are an introduction – for more detailed tips and advice search the Volunteering Resource. Volunteer Centres offer training workshops on many of the topics involved.
[It is very tempting to think that volunteer effort is simple and that it can be achieved in an instant. But this approach is unlikely to work for any time. It is better to think things through first and look for volunteers later – they will appreciate your consideration.]
1 - Why?
Step 1 is to ask why your group wishes to involve volunteers. To do this, you need to consider the aims and objectives of your group and decide how volunteers could contribute towards them and their achievement.
Examples of why groups involve volunteers include:
- Adding value to the group and it’s work
- Involving the community in the problems the group is trying to tackle
- Enabling people to be active in their community
Thinking about this should help your group to do three things:
- To ensure that there is a clear need for volunteers in your work.
- To help you explain to volunteers why you need them.
- To give your group a way of testing if volunteer involvement has been worthwhile and helped it to achieve it’s aims and objectives.
Tip: if you’re thinking of involving volunteers because it’s a cheap alternative, think again – volunteer involvement needs to be supported/resourced (see step 4 below) and it is unlikely to get much support if it can be perceived in any way as “job substitution” (see step 3 below)
2 - Checking it out
Getting the relevant stakeholders in your group to support volunteer involvement is important. Involving management, users, paid employees, etc in discussions and decisions about volunteer involvement, is a way of encouraging an across-the-board commitment to volunteers and a shared understanding of why they are helping your group.
- You should consider adopting a ‘volunteer policy’ for your group/organisation that outlines your position for each of the issues on this fact sheet. Sample policies are available in the Volunteering Resource
3 - Designing Volunteer Tasks
Your group will need to have clear ideas about the tasks it wants volunteers to do. These tasks could help your group to extend existing work or do something new. Your management committee and members will probably be able to come up with specific tasks for volunteers.
Alternatively, or in addition to the above, your group might be willing to develop new opportunities for volunteering in response to skills, experience and knowledge offered by prospective volunteers. This flexible approach might also be applied to people who want to volunteer for a short time, or who are willing to help on an occasional basis.
All volunteering tasks should be worthwhile and have a point, an end result. Tasks need to be achievable and realistic, and should bring benefits to the wider community, members and/or service users, the group/organisation and the volunteer.
When existing volunteers have been asked what they value in their volunteering they say:
- Satisfaction of seeing results
- Enjoyment
- Meeting people and making friends
- Sense of personal achievement
It is worth keeping these points in mind when planning volunteer involvement as matching the motivation of prospective volunteers to the needs of your group is a key task.
Tips:
- Ask yourselves if the tasks will attract people to volunteer to do them.
- Make sure the tasks wouldn’t normally be done (or haven’t previously been done) by employees/paid staff - “job substitution” should be avoided.
4 – Costs of Volunteering
Volunteers should add value to the work of your group/organisation, but they will need support and resources.
Possible costs include the following. For some of these, there may be legal minimum requirements that apply to your group depending on your circumstances.
- Out of pocket expenses (important for those on low incomes)
- Insurance for volunteers
- Health and safety measures (including instruction/training)
- Supporting volunteers
- Preparation and ongoing instruction/training
- Recruitment and selection/finding volunteers
For more detailed tips and advice search the Volunteering Resource
5 - Finding Volunteers
Volunteer Centres can help you find volunteers but it is unlikely that we will be able to find you all the potential volunteers you need when you need them: your group/organisation needs to think about what you can do yourselves to find people. You will need to agree a recruitment message and appropriate recruitment methods.
Your recruitment message should identify:
- The issue or problem that your group is trying to tackle,
- How people can help as volunteers,
- The benefits available to the volunteers
- How people can contact you
There are different recruitment methods your group can use to convey its recruitment message. There is the direct personal approach through, for example, word of mouth, talks to groups of people and open days. You can also do direct or indirect appeals to larger groups through local radio and newspapers for example.
Many groups print leaflets or posters and display them widely in public places such as libraries, shops, community centres, notice boards, job centres, etc. To get noticed, printed material needs to be well designed and visually attractive, easy to read and easy to understand. It is also worth considering if there are particular times of the year when people are more likely to be available.
- How do you ensure your volunteers reflect the diversity of the community your group serves? You should consider targeting under-represented groups and how you can address any barriers they may face. The Volunteer Centre can offer additional advice and support on how to involve more young people for example.
- Register your volunteering opportunities with your nearest Volunteer Centre so that we can help you find volunteers.
- For one off events or tasks, your local Volunteer Centre may be able to find you volunteers through a local employer that supports its employees with time off to help community groups/charities.
- If you are likely to be dealing with many enquiries, you should consider recording how people found out about your opportunities so that you can judge the most effective methods.
For more detailed tips and advice search the Volunteering Resource
6 - Choosing Volunteers
The aim of having an agreed way of choosing people is to ensure, as much as possible, that your group is involving people with appropriate attitudes, skills, times etc.
You need to have a selection process that:
- Is appropriate to the nature of the tasks expected of volunteers
- Which fits with the ethos of your group.
Particular care needs to be taken when volunteers will have contact with children, young people, or vulnerable adults, and as a first step Child and/or Vulnerable Adult Protection Policies should be considered. Legal requirements now exist for groups in Scotland that involve volunteers in roles that can be defined as “childcare positions”. Groups need to take a considered risk assessment approach to volunteer recruitment without unfairly discriminating against people.
If you register with your nearest Volunteer Centre and/or advertise openly for volunteers using other methods, you need to think about equal opportunities/ diversity issues – you may find a very wide range of people interested in volunteering with you:
- You need to look at how you are going to ensure that none of the procedures for - or indeed the people involved in - selecting volunteers discriminate unfairly against people with particular needs, backgrounds, or circumstances.
- Your group will need to decide:
- The method of selection, e.g. ‘tasters’, interview, application form, trial period, preparation training
- Who will do the selecting
- If any checks are to be undertaken, e.g. references, police/criminal record checks/disclosures or for e.g. for driving (licence checks)
- If records are kept, who has access to them and how is confidentiality maintained (do you comply with data protection legislation?)
- If your organisation already has an equal opportunities policy does it extend to volunteers? How will you monitor the policy for volunteer involvement?
For detailed info and advice on:
- Each of the selection methods,
- Legal requirements,
- Equal opportunities/Diversity,
- Confidentiality and data protection procedures,
And for sample documents for you to use, search the Volunteering Resource
7 - Keeping Volunteers
- You need to think about how you are going to keep volunteers and support them in their work.
Do you find out from the start what has motivated someone to enquire about volunteering with you?
Do you ask what they want to get out of it? Understand this and how it might change over time and you can organise their volunteering more effectively for everyone’s benefit.
Support is continuous and takes many forms, for example:
- A warm welcome
- A contact person
- Time to settle in and adjust
- Contact with others in the group
- A chance to speak on major decisions which will affect what they do
- Any necessary training
- Mentoring, where a more experienced volunteer or staff member supports new volunteers on a one –to-one basis
- Making sure a volunteer does not over commit e.g. suffer from burn-out
- Clear procedures to follow if something goes wrong.
Feedback is important for all of us and volunteers are no different. Give feedback frequently and vary it. It should be honest, it should be consistent and it should be individualised. Say thank you – it costs nothing but its value is enormous.
The main reasons why people leave volunteering include:
- I was asked to do more and more
- It could have been better organised
- It took up too much time
- My efforts were not always appreciated
- I was out of pocket
- I became bored
- Make sure your group puts enough effort into supporting volunteers to ensure these issues do not come up.
- Make sure your group reimburses people if they’re out of pocket through volunteering.
- Look at the different ways groups can say ‘thank you’ or recognise people’s efforts in different ways including perhaps accrediting volunteers for their skills/experience.
- Consider introducing a ‘volunteer agreement’ that is signed off by your group/organisation and the volunteer before they start, so that both parties have clear realistic expectations from the outset. Sample agreements can be found in the Volunteering Resource
8 - Is it working?
At the beginning of this process – in Step One, you would have decided why volunteers should be involved in your work. Being clear about these reasons should help you to judge if volunteers have made the contributions you expected at the outset. The perceptions and views of your management, users, funders, volunteers, and any staff will be important in helping to judge the impact of volunteers on your group’s work.
Acknowledgements:
Much of the text here is taken from the Volunteer Development Scotland leaflet "Basic Guidelines – Involving Volunteers". Thanks to Norrie Murray at VDS for his permission to reproduce parts of the leaflet. Revised and updated for the Volunteering Resource by Volunteer Centre Glasgow (David Maxwell, Emma McLean, Alex Wilson, Michelle Young) November 2005.
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