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Toolkit 1 Planning for Volunteers

This toolkit is for organisations who are:

  • Looking to recruit volunteers for the first time
  • Looking to refresh their knowledge on volunteering best practice

In this toolkit, we will cover:

  1. What is volunteering?
  2. Attracting volunteers to your organisation
  3. Providing a good experience for your volunteers
  4. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
  5. Volunteering and the Law
  6. Health and Safety including Duty of Care
  7. Safeguarding
  8. Insurance
  9. Volunteer Strategy
  10. Volunteer Policies

Once you have planned for your volunteers and have your volunteering strategy and policies in place then you will be ready to move on to Toolkit 2.

 

1. What is Volunteering?

Volunteering is when someone spends unpaid time doing something to benefit others. This doesn’t include helping close friends or relatives but is something that benefits the wider community. Volunteering can be formal and organised by organisations or informal within communities. It should always be a free choice made by the person giving up their time. Volunteering should be open to all, no matter what their age, background, disability, ethnic or national origins, gender, marital status, nationality, religion or sexual orientation.

 

2. Attracting Volunteers to Your Organisation

Volunteers are motivated for many different reasons. It’s important to understand and appeal to volunteers’ motivations to effectively attract them to your volunteering opportunities. Be clear on why you need volunteers, the benefits to all – the organisation, its staff, as well as to the volunteers, how you will support them and how you will provide a good volunteering experience.

Key questions to ask yourself when planning how to attract volunteers to your roles include:

  • Have you planned how volunteers will fit into your organisation’s structure and mission?
  • Have you made an outline of what you would like your volunteers to do?
  • Do you have the organisational capacity to manage and support your volunteers?
  • Can you be flexible and person-centred in your approach to individuals?
  • What key attributes, knowledge and skills does someone need to have to be able to successfully carry out the volunteer role you are creating?
  • How will you attract a diverse range of volunteers to the opportunities that you are offering?
  • Have you got plans in place for how you will welcome and support your volunteers including those with an additional support need or a disability?
  • Why would people volunteer with you – what is your unique selling point?
  • Are you clear on what you are offering to volunteers? This will need to be detailed in your volunteer role profiles (see Toolkit 2).

3. Providing a Good Experience for Your Volunteers

It is important to give your volunteers a good experience when volunteering for your organisation. In January 2019 NCVO published its ‘Time Well Spent’ report on volunteering. This found eight things that make up a good experience for volunteers which you should bear in mind when planning for volunteers:-

  1. Inclusive of everyone
  2. Flexible around people’s lives
  3. Impactful and makes a difference
  4. Connected to others, the cause and the organisation
  5. Balanced, doesn’t overburden the volunteer
  6. Enjoyable and makes people feel good
  7. It shouldn’t feel like an obligation
  8. Meaningful to volunteers’ lives, interests and priorities.

Useful Link

Download this report – Time Well Spent 2023 | News index | NCVO

 

4. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

You should be thinking about how to make your volunteer roles inclusive and accessible throughout the planning and recruitment process so that you have volunteers with different backgrounds, skills, experiences and qualities.

Useful Links

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: Equity, diversity and inclusion in volunteering | NCVO

Guidance for diversifying your volunteers including top tips: Diversifying-your-Volunteers-Toolkit-WGVS-English-2021.pdf (nptcvs.wales)

Recruiting volunteers with criminal convictions: GIVING-TIME-Toolkit.pdf (tnlcommunityfund.org.uk)

Disability Inclusion Toolkit: TOOLKIT-NI.compressed.pdf (mencap.org.uk)

Engaging older volunteers: Helping out: Taking an inclusive approach to engaging older volunteers | Centre for Ageing Better (ageing-better.org.uk)

 

5. Volunteering and the Law

It is important that you understand the legal implications of recruiting volunteers. It is important to distinguish between paid staff and volunteers and to avoid language that suggests an employment contract. You need to consider:

  • Volunteer Rights
  • Health and Safety
  • Insurance
  • Safeguarding
  • Volunteers receiving state benefits
  • Copyright
  • Volunteer Drivers

Useful Links

Volunteers and the law | NCVO

Making sure you don’t create an employment contract | NCVO

 

6. Health & Safety Including Duty of Care

You have a duty of care to your volunteers to ensure that, as far as reasonably practicable, they are not exposed to risks to their health and safety. You should provide the same level of protection to volunteers as employees and include them in your risk assessments.

Useful Links

Voluntary work – Health and safety law: Your duties to protect volunteers – HSE

Voluntary work – Include volunteers in your risk assessment – HSE

 

 7. Safeguarding

Your organisation must think carefully about how it safeguards its volunteers and everyone who encounters your volunteers. Safeguarding should be considered throughout your policies relating to volunteers.  You need to safeguard both your volunteers and those that they will be supporting.

Please see the links below regarding DBS checks. For more support with these, please contact our Community Development Manager – cdm@rvs.org.uk

Remember that for standard and enhanced DBS checks, the applicant may already have signed up to the update service which you can check.

Useful Links

Safeguarding (getoutgetactive.co.uk) – click download for an excellent summary of safeguarding

Safeguarding and volunteers | NCVO

Safeguarding, vulnerable clients and DBS | NCVO

Find out which DBS check is right for your employee – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

DBS check application process for volunteers – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

 

8. Insurance

You need to organise insurance cover for your volunteers to make sure they are fully protected while volunteering for you. This will come under your usual Employers’ Liability Insurance (if your organisation already has paid employees) and your Public Liability Insurance but you must check with your insurance company to make sure that your policy covers volunteers. You need to think about:

  • The upper or lower age limit on the insurance policy
  • Does the insurance policy explicitly mention volunteers?
  • Does the insurance policy cover all the activities that your volunteers will be doing?

Useful Link

Getting volunteer insurance | NCVO

 

9. Volunteer Strategy

A volunteer strategy conveys your vision regarding volunteers and clarifies why your organisation uses volunteers. It shows how volunteers will fit into your organisation’s structure and mission and includes an outline of what your volunteers do. In addition, it is a demonstration to stakeholders that volunteers are highly valued within your organisation.

Although this can seem daunting, particularly for smaller organisations, you can start by considering:

  • What is the purpose of your volunteers?
  • How many volunteers do you need?
  • What skills and qualities should your volunteers have?
  • How will you ensure that your volunteer recruitment and support is inclusive?
  • Who will support, manage and supervise your volunteers?
  • What policies do you need to put in place?
  • What financial resources do you have to support volunteer involvement such as expenses, training, equipment and recognition?
  • How will you collect volunteer feedback?

You should include your staff, trustees, clients and any existing volunteers when creating your volunteer strategy and review it on an annual basis.

 

10. Volunteer Policies

You can use your existing organisation policies although some may need to be tweaked to include volunteers. Some new ones may need to be created for example for volunteer drivers. Your policies should include:

  • Code of Conduct
  • Safeguarding
  • GDPR/Confidentiality
  • Health and Safety
  • Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
  • Expenses
  • Complaints
  • Lone working (if applicable)
  • Driving (if applicable).

Your policies should be checked and updated on an annual basis. These policies should be included in your Volunteer Handbook (see Toolkit 2).

 

Checklist

Before you move on to the next toolkit, check that your organisation:

  1. Understands the definition of volunteering
  2. Has considered how to make your organisation attractive to volunteers
  3. Has thought about how you will provide a good experience of volunteering
  4. Understands equality, diversity and inclusion in relation to the recruitment and support of volunteers
  5. Understands the laws which apply to volunteers
  6. Understands your duty of care for volunteers (health and safety)
  7. Understands that you must safeguard your volunteers and anyone the volunteers are supporting
  8. Has put insurance in place for your volunteers
  9. Has written a volunteer strategy
  10. Has created a set of volunteer policies.

You are now ready to move on to Toolkit 2 which includes writing role profiles and marketing your volunteering opportunities.