The strategic volunteering quiz
Below are a list of questions or prompts for your national organisation to think a little differently about volunteering. How does your organisation do?
What are your strategic objectives?
How do volunteers and volunteering help to achieve them?
If volunteers and volunteering help to achieve them, how is volunteering planned for to make sure it is a success?
Is this planning for volunteering undertaken alongside your organisation's other strategic planning?
Is the planning for volunteering done by the board or the CEO or the top team in your organisation?
If not, is the planning understood and reported to the top team in your organisation?
Isn't having a volunteer manager enough?
Volunteering England encourages volunteer managers to be in place in organisations where there are volunteers involved. This is so that volunteers are properly looked after as a fantastic resource in the organisation. However, the planning of such an important resource needs to be undertaken alongside the strategic planning for all of your organisation's important resources.
To find out more about a CEO's view of volunteering, see the publication From the Top Down by Susan J. Ellis.
If you are doing all of these things then have you considered:
Showing how well planned and looked after your volunteers are - achieving Investing in Volunteers?
Expanding your volunteering horizons by working with businesses and tapping into their employer supported volunteering?
Training in volunteer management gives a host of tools for any volunteer manager to succeed - Excellence in volunteer management provides a range of training and learning options.
Measuring the impact of your volunteering which can help explain to funders the wider impacts of volunteers?
