Support with volunteering

Volunteer managers play a vital role in volunteer-involving organisations (VIOs) as it’s their responsibility to recruit, retain, train, develop, evaluate and look at the various needs of their volunteer team.

There are many different ways we can help you.

• Developing policies and procedures. It’s important you have these in place before you take on any volunteers. Involve the whole organisation so you all have a clear vision about how volunteers will fit in with your organisation and what type of roles you want them to do. Volunteers may be line managed by other members of staff so it is important everyone is dedicated to your volunteer programme.
• Developing and promoting roles. The role you promote will be your marketing tool. It’s important you get the right recruitment message across to potential volunteers. We can also guide you to target your roles to a variety of audiences, as well as help promote them on our website and social media channels.
• Advice on screening procedures, including application forms, references, DBS checks and where to signpost volunteers who may be unsuitable for your organisation.
• Advice on supporting and developing your volunteers in their roles.
• Advice on rewarding and recognising your volunteers, including our useful Reward and Recognition Toolkit.
• Support and advice on evaluating your volunteer programme and what benefits it brings to volunteers, people using services and the organisation as a whole.
• Promote your opportunities on our dedicated volunteering platform.

Volunteering can come in all shapes and sizes and there’s often a role to suit everyone and their own interests.

There are some misconceptions about volunteering and what it means, but it’s flexible and can provide you with plenty of benefits, such as learning new skills, making new friends, becoming more employable and much more.

Access our volunteering platform

CWVA’s volunteering platform provides plenty of benefits for both volunteers and any organisations offering volunteering opportunities.

Both volunteers and organisations offering opportunities can create their own accounts on TeamKinetic and use the range of features to their advantage. Volunteers can search for opportunities by location, category, organisation and other fields to find a role perfect for them, while organisations can manage the process of recruiting volunteers from start to finish and run off useful reports.

• Visit CWVA’ volunteering platform

CWVA and partners have developed some resources to help organisations with the volunteering platform.

• Comms pack to promote your opportunities
• Full tutorial about using TeamKinetic
• An introduction to the platform and customising your site
• Guide to setting up a complex rota

If you need any additional support with the volunteering platform, please email: michael.mitchell@cwva.org.uk.

At CWVA, we can help organisations and individuals with employee volunteering, a form of volunteering where you give up your time as part of your employment.

Many organisations offer employees the opportunity to volunteer in work hours, whether as a group or individual, as this is a great way to improve wellbeing, build morale and connect with the local community.

Whether you’re an individual or organisation looking for volunteering opportunities, or a community sector organisation wanting to offer these opportunities to others, we can support you with this process at CWVA.

We’ve created two online forms so you can tell us a bit more about your interest in employee volunteering, helping us with the matching process.

• Online form for organisations or individuals looking to volunteer
• Online form for organisations wanting to offer volunteering opportunities