Impact Report 2019
Volunteering: Engagement and Inclusion
Our ambition is to provide excellent services that:
- Empower more people to take up appropriate, high-quality, inclusive volunteering opportunities in the organisations and communities across the city that need their support.
- Facilitate and deliver high-quality learning, guidance, employability and capacity-building programmes for volunteer-involving organisations and for people requiring additional support to make their contributions.
In 2018/19, there were…
- 95,191 users of volunteerglasgow.org and opportunities.volunteerglasgow.org – equivalent to 15.2% of Glasgow’s population – provided with help to volunteer.
- 3,770 people formally registering with us online for the first time.
- 38 engagement events that we designed and delivered or attended.
- 2,112 people provided with guidance to help them volunteer via our drop in service, or by telephone and email.
And:
- 97% of people interested in volunteering rated our services as “excellent or good”.
In addition:
- We provided 2,354 Saltire Award certificates to young people in recognition of their volunteering for Scottish Government with the support of our Youth Volunteering Ambassadors; working with schools, colleges, universities and a wide range of youth organisations to promote and support volunteering.
- 58 people completed a Volunteering Works programme with 28 achieving an SQA Employability Award at SCQF level 4.
- We developed a free tool kit for a wide range of organisations to enable them to better support their members and service users to get involved in volunteering opportunities.
- We provided expert support services in local areas with extra funding support, including Pollokshields and Southside Central Volunteering Inititive and the volunteering element of Included. Click here for more info on the impact of these local partnership services.
We facilitated or participated in a number of service or policy developments with partners and stakeholders. These included:
- Leading the process of refreshing the city’s Volunteering Strategy with our partners in the Community Planning Partnership, ensuring that stakeholders informed our individual and collective priorities for action.
- Facilitating the ongoing work between Scotland’s Third Sector Interfaces, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and a range of other partners to clarify the DWP rules for welfare benefit claimants on volunteering, and to ensure these are widely disseminated and consistently applied.
- Participation in the Elevate Public Social Partnership, Barlinnie Throughcare Working Group, and in the HSCP Employability Board.
Funding and Support
These strategic, infrastructure support services and activities were supported with funding from Glasgow City Council (IGF), Scottish Government (we are a partner in Glasgow’s Third Sector Interface) and some additional funds raised through primary purpose trading activities. Funding enabled us to provide these services with a team of 4.2 FTE staff and 14 people volunteering as members of the Welcome Team and as Youth Volunteering Ambassadors from our city centre accessible office.
Helen’s story:
“The Volunteering Works programme gave me the confidence to apply for jobs and seek volunteering opportunities. I was then given the option to be part of the Volunteer Glasgow welcome team which gave me a routine whilst I was unemployed, introduced me to a lovely group of staff and gave me the opportunity to share information with members of the public seeking information on volunteering opportunities. This was extremely helpful to my development. I am over the moon to report that I am now in full-time employment, have great connections with staff at Volunteer Glasgow and met great friends through volunteering.”
