Are you keen to ensure that volunteering is accessible to everyone and to increase the diversity of volunteer involvement in your organisation, group or project?
This page of the Good Practice Bank should help you to meet those aims and measure your success.
As part of working towards this goal, your organisation needs to develop systems that will help you understand what you're doing well and where things could be improved. Introducing a standard or regular method of monitoring your volunteers will help to identity this. But, remember that people need to feel comfortable about disclosing information about themselves, even anonymously. You can develop the right context for monitoring through having an open and supportive approach to volunteer involvement.
The Institute for Volunteer Research published a study in 2008 looking at how volunteer-involving organisations and Volunteer Centres undertake monitoring of their volunteers.
A sample monitoring form was developed as part of the report and it's available to download and adapt for use with your volunteers.
You can also access a copy of the report and read its recommendations on how and when to collect and use monitoring data.
