27. Is it always right to involve volunteers?

Sometimes organisations, particularly charities, feel that because they operate within the voluntary sector they should involve volunteers but this is not always appropriate. There are many good reasons to involve volunteers, i.e. to extend the service offered, to involve the local community, to add value to services; but there are also bad reasons i.e. to replace paid staff, because it looks good, because you feel you should. Before you involve volunteers in your organisation you need to sit down and work out why. Look at your reasons and try to draft them into a statement that explains to your staff, user group and potential volunteers why volunteers need to be involved in the organisation. If you cannot come up with a reasonable argument then the chances are it isn’t appropriate to involve volunteers. If you involve volunteers when it is not appropriate then you will find that they are not fulfilled and do not stick around very long, at worst you may find that they feel exploited, that staff feel they are an extra burden and that your user group feels short changed.

Secondly you need to decide whether it is practical to involve volunteers in your organisation. Lots of organisations decide to take on a volunteer to 'help out' without planning what their role will be or how they will be managed. What will they be doing, who will supervise them, how will they be trained, where will they sit, is there money to reimburse their expenses? If you can't answer all of these questions then your organisation probably isn't ready to involve volunteers. It is good to be flexible and adapt to the skills and experience of people offering time but you do need some idea of areas of work that are appropriate for and can be completed by volunteers and of the boundaries and limitations of volunteer involvement in your organisation. If you take on volunteers without proper planning and preparation then you are setting yourself up to fail. The volunteer will have a poor experience and may not offer time again and you will feel very disheartened. Your local Volunteer Bureau should be able to advise you about setting up a volunteer programme and Volunteering England can provide you with advice, information and publications that you may find helpful.