There are many ways you can organised your employer supported volunteering programme. We have detailed eight ideas on the following pages:
‘Charity of the Year’ programmes.
Your company, prompted by employees, commits to supporting a range of volunteering activities, focusing on a specific organisation. This enables you to build long-term relationship with a charity or community organisation. Care needs to be taken to ensure that this is not seen as top-down choice, contrary to the employee-led principle. Some flexibility and resource should be kept to one side to allow for requests from smaller charities with immediate and one-off requests for assistance.
Fundraising
Employees can be supported in their fundraising activities by offering practical resources such as meeting rooms, telephones, photocopying and by offering to match the amount they raise (often with a stated maximum).
The Charities Aid Foundation can help with the financial side of this - go to
www.cafonline.org/default.aspx?page=6842 for further information.
You can also try www.fundraising.co.uk – a site for fundraisers with a whole range of related information
One-off ‘challenge’ events
A 'challenge' is a task, usually practical, set by local community organisations e.g. painting a hall, clearing a river, building a dry stone wall, creating a children's playground, giving a Christmas party. Challenges can involve employees’ family members, particularly when the event is carried out over a weekend. Challenges can provide a good ‘taster’ for those new to volunteering and brings practical resources to community organisations that may not have the resources to do it themselves. Challenges are excellent for teambuilding and motivation.
Challenges do require careful planning and managing to avoid problems such as:
- too many people with not enough to do
- people not turning up
- accidents.
For more information on health and safety go to Health and Safety
Challenges can be difficult to translate into a sustainable programme after the first rush of enthusiasm. It is important that information is provided on the day on how employees can continue volunteering with that organisation.
Mentoring schemes
Mentoring provides the opportunity to develop the interpersonal skills of coaching, listening and motivation through one-on-one relationships set up with clear guidelines as to purpose, limits, timescales and venue.
For example, employees can be partnered with:
- secondary school pupils to help provide positive role models, advise on career aspirations, provide an insight into the world of work
- young homeless or unemployed people to assist them to acquire skills and join the job market
- primary school pupils to improve reading, maths and IT skills
- staff at various levels in the voluntary sector to transfer skills and experience
- business start-ups e.g. through the Princes Trust
Mentoring is highly motivational because its positive effects on the mentee are very visible. Mentors do need training before they start, including on any cultural differences between themselves and the mentor, and issues such as confidentiality.
Virtual Volunteering
Already well-established in the US, this approach; enables volunteers to work at their desk on behalf of groups in the UK, overseas and on the web. Examples: web research; email mentoring or ‘listening’ chat room or newsgroup supervision. Virtual volunteering is helpful if volunteers have limited time as they can keep in touch via email or phone. However, the lack of face to face contact may not motivate the volunteer and might make it difficult to build relationships with partner organisations.
Board membership
Volunteers, often bringing professional or managerial skills, can serve on school boards or on the management committees of voluntary or public sector organisations. This enables them to experience the strategic management of a whole organisation. Board membership offers high community visibility and gives good experience in management, decision-making and developing strategies and policy. Board membership usually requires a minimum one year time commitment and effects can take a long time to show due to long intervals between meetings.
Using professional skills
Using your professional skills to assist voluntary and other organisations such as small businesses can be particularly rewarding. One example is the project ProHelp, which is a national network of professional firms who give their time and expertise for free to voluntary and community groups.
Established in 1989 by Business in the Community, ProHelp has grown to 800 firms across England.
Development assignments
These are short placements in community organisations for either individuals or teams. Projects are clearly defined and meet the development needs of the employee or team - usually focusing on the skills of project management, confidence, negotiation and communication. Development assignments are a proven vehicle for improving skills and teambuilding. They should be tightly structured to enables clear targets to be set and measured. However, care needs to be taken that participation in the scheme remains voluntary.
The ‘Eight approaches’ has been adapted from a book kindly supplied by Business in the Community, www.bitc.org.uk
