Before you begin
Take time to reflect on:
- why your organisation wants to involve volunteers
- what you’d like volunteers help with, the skills and experience you’d like them to bring to your organisation, and the impact you’d like them to contribute to as well as, importantly, what you can offer them in return
- how you will make volunteering an inclusive, safe, positive and mutually beneficial experience
- where volunteers will fit within your organisations structure and where they will physically do their roles
- when you’d like volunteers to start, do their work and when you might want their role to end
Managing volunteers in a way that is sustainable, and benefits them, you and the people your organisation exists to benefit takes time, work and may well take money.
Volunteers are not ‘free’ labour, and there is not an unlimited number of people out there looking to volunteer.
You may want to do a cost vs benefit exercise as part of your planning.
People volunteer for a range of reasons, have various motivations for doing so and face different barriers and have different things going on in their lives. It is important that your organisation is specific and realistic about what it needs and what it can offer, as this will inform all other steps within the volunteer recruitment process.
Creating a Volunteering Strategy and Volunteering Policy
Having a Volunteering Strategy can be a useful road map to ensure that any roles you create, and recruit for, are achieving your organisations strategic ambitions for involving volunteers. Our Introduction to writing a Volunteering Strategy can be a good starting point.
A Volunteering Policy can be a useful document for setting out and capturing how you will deliver the strategy day to day.
Developing your volunteer role(s)
When designing a volunteer role it is important to balance what will be attractive and doable by someone and what will be useful to your organisation. Consider volunteer motivations and how you will build in things people may be looking for through volunteering e.g connection with others, skills development (for a career), improved confidence, working directly with beneficiaries (or not), a sense of achievement or a sense of making a difference.
Volunteer role descriptions help volunteers, and other members of an organisation, to understand what their role involves – why it is important and what the person doing it will be doing.
Usually they are a written document that a potential volunteer can use to understand if they want to apply for the role, and refer back to when in it. They can also help volunteer managers and supervisors, and the volunteer themselves, to assess how they are getting on with the role. They can help with things such as boundaries and avoiding volunteer burn out.
A role description should include:
- the role title
- aims and expectations of the role
- an outline of the role’s tasks and responsibilities
- role boundaries and any activities volunteers need to avoid
- whether you expect the volunteer to adhere to certain policies or procedures for example, health and safety, equity, diversity and inclusion
- who will supervise and support the role
- if you will pay expenses and for what
- what success will look like
It is usually good practice to include:
- why a new volunteer might like to take up the opportunity
- location and hours and pattern/routine if applicable
- how the role fits with the organisation’s work
- expectations of behaviour and dress (if appropriate)
- essential and desirable skills and qualifications
- required person specifications (if appropriate)
Some people choose to share a full, or shortened, version of a role description when advertising for potential volunteers or early in the recruitment process. Some people use a slightly shorter one. It is important to think about what a potential volunteer may need or want to know before deciding whether to apply.
Take a look at our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Volunteer Management resource for ideas on how to make volunteer roles more attractive to a wider range of people, and meet people’s differing needs.
Where can I get help with writing a good role description?
At Voscur we can discuss with you role descriptions you are working on. Depending on how much support we’ve given your organisation, and which organisation you’re from, we may be able to look over something or give you some more tailored tips. It can be helpful to look at other people’s role descriptions – but use a ‘critical eye’ not everyone’s are good!
NCVO has some good online resources about writing role descriptions:
www.ncvo.org.uk/help-and-guidance/involving-volunteers
Although very similar volunteer role descriptions are not job role descriptions, and it is important to not call them job descriptions.
What things do I need to do to make sure I’m not creating a job contract?
The main things to avoid doing are:
- offering any remuneration (pay or gifts with a value) beyond paying reasonable expenses after obtaining receipts for these
- using language more akin to that of paying work e.g ‘job’, ‘contract’, ‘probation’,
- being too ‘strict’ on expectations e.g ‘minimum volunteering term of 1 year’
Instead, think about ‘role descriptions’, ‘volunteering agreements’ and volunteer socials, and training opportunities that are open to all volunteers.
Unless your organisation is entirely volunteer-led, you should have separate policies and procedures for volunteers’ recruitment, supervision, problem-solving and other parts of the individual’s relationship with the organisation.
NCVO has some good examples of where things have gone wrong in the past for organisations, and where the law deemed an employment contract had been created:
Getting ready to start recruitment
It is important to check that your organisation is ready from a governance perspective to welcome volunteers and that volunteers are mentioned in and covered by things such as: insurance, policies and procedures.
What policies and procedures might I need in place?
You will need to make sure that you have relevant policy and procedures in place that will support and protect volunteers, beneficiaries and your organisation and that will support your organisation is operate within the Law.
Examples of these may include:
- Safeguarding Adults at Risk and/or Child Protection
- Health and Safety
- (Compliments, Comments) Complaints
- Grievances
- Equality/Equity, Diversity, Inclusion
- Expenses
- Disclosure and Barring and Recruitment of Ex-Offenders
It can be helpful to do a form of risk assessment when designing a volunteer role – to help inform what safer recruitment steps you may need to take within your recruitment process (including eligibility for and approach to doing DBS checks , and at what level), and what health and safety considerations you need to risk manage.
Reaching potential volunteers
There are lots of different ways to reach potential volunteers. Some volunteer managers take a ‘get our adverts out far and wide approach’, other’s chose to be more specific and work out ‘who’ (in the wide sense of the word) might be a good fit for a role before then deciding how best to reach these people – taking a ‘target audience’ marketing informed approach.
Where can I advertise my volunteer roles?
It is important to consider where your target audience are likely to be looking. It is also important not to underestimate the benefit of word of mouth, and to not forget about your own (social) communications and website – as that is where people passionate about your cause may find you.
A well-placed poster or flyer in a community venue or local cafe if wanting to recruit locally might bring in some applicants.
Previous beneficiaries, or people shortly exiting your service, could also be great volunteers.
Other places to advertise include:
- the two Universities and their Student Unions – reach out to their ‘volunteering’ or ‘civic engagement’ teams
- via other partners or local contacts
- posters and flyers, placed locally and in community centres etc, or through doors
- www.govo.org the Royal Voluntary Service’s new national platform
Managing the recruitment process
Some volunteer involving organisations make use of Digital Volunteer Management [Eventually add link to ‘An Introduction to Digital Volunteer Management Systems systems resource] others use a combination of spreadsheets, or even paper records.
It is important to make sure any data kept on record about potential volunteers complies with GDPR.
Inducting new volunteers
A good induction can hugely help a volunteer feel welcomed and settled early on, whereas a bad induction can do the opposite, and potentially even mean a volunteer doesn’t come back! It is important to avoid leaving new volunteers on their own, unsure of what they are meant to be doing, when they should have a break, and where the loo is! Beyond this what you put into your volunteer induction will be highly tailored to your organisation, the role, and the needs of the volunteer (remember to consider any specific access needs).
Creating an ‘Induction Checklist’ can help you make sure that you don’t miss out any key information, or the completion of any key paperwork. Introductions can be a good opportunity to introduce volunteers to colleagues and team mates. Some organisations do extended inductions, or offer role shadowing or taster days.
Writing a Volunteer Agreement
Volunteer agreements can help organisations and volunteers understand what they can expect from each other, and any specific boundaries etc. They can be useful documents for referring back to – in supporting a volunteer in their role.
NCVO have a good resource on volunteer agreements:
Writing a volunteer agreement | NCVO
For information, advice and guidance about the rest of the ‘volunteer journey’ and retaining volunteers – see our resource on this topic here [Link to Retaining Volunteers Resource]. From time to time to we also deliver training sessions on both recruiting and retaining volunteers – check our VCSE Academy page to find out more.
Disclaimer
We make every effort to ensure that our information is correct at the time of publication.
This is only intended as a brief summary of relevant issues and information. Legal advice should be sought where appropriate. The inclusion of other organisations in this information does not imply any endorsement of independent bodies, they are just for signposting purposes.
Voscur is unable to accept liability for any loss or damage or inconvenience arising as a consequence of the use of this information.
