Current projects
VCW provides support to volunteers and the organisations that involve them through a range of services. Our core team oversee the running of the Centre, measuring the levels and the types of volunteering happening in Westminster (our LAA funded project) and providing Criminal Record Bureau checking and Independent Safeguarding Authority registration services (a self-financing post funded through the charges we make to organisations for the checks we run for them).
Through the work of our Volunteer Engagement and Best Practice team we help some of the most marginalised and isolated members of the community to get involved in volunteering.
Projects in this team range from delivering the DWP Volunteering Brokerage scheme to supporting people with disabilities into volunteering. The team also spend much of their time supporting the huge range of organisations in Westminster who involve volunteers.
Their support includes delivering training courses, one-to-one support sessions, heath checking, developing online volunteer management tools and much more. This work is funded through local trusts and foundations and capacity builders.
Our youth volunteering team (funded by v, with a secondee from the CSPAN) supports young people between the ages of 16 and 25 to get involved in volunteering and works with organisations to develop new and exciting opportunities for them to get involved in.
We work with a range of local employers through our Time and Talents for Westminster programme, run by our employee volunteering team. The team get staff from organisations ranging from government departments to major financial institutions, out into the community volunteering.
Impact of the recession
In general we have seen a significant increase in the number of people using our services since the recession hit. At the moment it has not affected our funding levels, but this will hit us around 2011.
We have seen an increase in the number of employers paying us to facilitate their ESV schemes and have developed a number of partnerships with other Volunteer Centre’s to enable us to deliver work for employers who have offices in both Westminster and other areas.
As a result of the recession we’ve seen considerably more enquires as the figures above have highlighted and run the DWP Volunteering Brokerage Scheme for the four Central London boroughs North of the river.
Successes and barriers
Some of the key highlights have come as a result of the Volunteering Strategy we developed with the Local Strategic Partnership and launched in 2008.
2009 saw us finalising substantial additional funding for Volunteer Centre Westminster and for volunteering more generally in the City.
We launched two new projects focusing on Sport and Event volunteering as a result of this funding and the local authority put money into promoting volunteering through its communication and marketing team and invested heavily in developing its own employee volunteering scheme.
As already mentioned, we’ve seen the expansion of our employee volunteering scheme (Time and Talents for Westminster) and our work with Volunteer Managers has received a significant boost through closer partnership working with the CVS (Voluntary Action Westminster) and funding from the CapacityBuilders Volunteer management programme and BASIS.
One of the biggest challenges facing us and perhaps opportunities as well is my departure. This comes at the same time as the organisation appoints a new Chair of Trustees. There is however a firm foundation on which a new Chief Executive can build and much of the next twelve months will be spent looking at the next phase of our 2008-13 strategic plan and preparing for the inevitable reductions in funding which will follow the general election.
