As China hands over to the UK for the Olympic Games in 2012, we want to hear about your work with sport volunteer management. Laura Ferguson asks - Volunteer Centres are you working with or looking to work with sport?
Sport organisations: Are you looking for ways to improve your volunteering and volunteer management?
This article has funding related information, a request and an update. We hope you'll respond to all three!
A. £££ Funding £££
There are already lots of examples of funded work between Volunteer Centres and sport. Here are some current and new funding pots that may allow you to grow this work.
- Sport England lottery funding is about to change – now is your chance to reply to the consultation: find out more and reply to the consultation
- LAAs on sport and volunteering – there are 24 LAA areas with both sport and volunteering as priorities. Find out if your area is one of them and also how one Volunteer Centre is working on LAA targets.
- Do you know what’s happening in your region with The Legacy Trust? They are delivering funding to the English regions to enable each to work up a detailed business plan to deliver programmes. Using the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games as a catalyst, the Legacy Trust will fund projects which enable communities from across the UK to take part in cultural and sporting activity in the build up to 2012. These are not open applications: Most of the funding is being co-ordinated through Regional Cultural Consortia. Get in touch with your Regional Cultural Consortia to find out more.
B. Shout about success
Is your Volunteer Centre’s work with sport on our website?
Please tell us your plans to work in a funded way with sport:
Please let us know if you:
1.Currently are funded to work on a sport project, or,
2.Actively are looking for funding for a sport project, or
3.Are about to start a funded sport project, or,
4.Have already completed a funded sport project.
We’d like to know because it will help us to
- Get information to you about funding opportunities for your work
- Share with other volunteer centres how to start working with sport
- Let sport organisations know just how much of the network of volunteer centres are working with sport
- Work with Sport England to factor in volunteer centre support to their sport funding from 2009 onwards
C. 2008: Our sport work so far
Finally, below is an overview of the work so far this year. Volunteering England has been:
- Influencing policy and funding
- Working closely with policy makers and potential funders in sport such as Sport England, to highlight the need for volunteer management and to promote Volunteer Centres as a local provider of volunteer management expertise
- Working with the sector skills council for sport and active recreation: SkillsActive, who work to improve skills in the sector
- Sharing where others are succeeding – our sport website holds a range of examples from Volunteer Centres across the country, who are improving volunteer management in sport.
- Resources for Volunteer Centres - Working with the Sport England information and training programme for volunteers: runningsports. This branded set of information and training materials is available for volunteers to help them in their sport volunteering roles. Volunteer Centres are also being invited to make use of these sport-specific resources – see more in the article on runningsports
- Volunteer management for national governing bodies of sport (NGBs) – We have been working with 46 NGBs to assist their applications to Sport England for 2009 – 2013 funding. Find out what we are saying to NGBs here.
To find out more about sport or about Volunteer Centres including who’s who and how to start working with each other, visit our website.
