Volunteers’ Week 1st-7th June - a celebration of caring communities

This week (Monday 1st to Sunday 7th June) is Volunteers’ Week (link). celebrating the time, skills, experience and goodwill given by people up and down the UK. Visit www.volunteersweek.org for more information.   

Volunteering has of course taken on added significance in these challenging times. Numbers of volunteers have multiplied exponentially in direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic.   According to insurer Legal & General and analysts at the Centre for Economics and Business Research, 10 million Brits are now volunteering – and many of them state their intention to carry on afterwards. Read more here.

Inspiring Norfolk 

At local level, the response from people across Norfolk since March has been equally inspiring. We at CAN are working with our partners in the VCSE sector to help channel and deploy volunteers and resources to where their skills and experience can best be utilised. To date, more than 4,000 people have spontaneously signed up through the Volunteer Portal (link) to offer help to the vulnerable and shielding members of their local or wider communities. visit the portal here. 

Starting a community support group? 

If you manage an existing community response group or are thinking of starting one up, we can help. Our Community Development Officers are highly experienced in providing advice and support with volunteer management. Find out more here.   

Managing volunteers  

A volunteer policy helps define your volunteers’ roles, and how they might expect to be treated. The policy should also explain recruitment, equality and diversity, training, supervision, support and health and safety procedures.  

• demonstrate your organisation's commitment to its volunteer programme. 
• ensure consistency and that all volunteers are treated equally and fairly. 
• clarify where they can turn to if they feel that things are going wrong. 
• paid staff, senior management and trustees fully understand why volunteers are involved, and what their roles are. 

Supporting volunteers 

It’s important to get to know your volunteers and ask them for feedback to assess their levels of satisfaction with what they’re doing.  feedback from them to be able to measure their satisfaction with their roles. This can help you revise and revisit roles if needed and offer opportunities to keep volunteers engaged and motivated.  Having system for supporting a volunteer can help you to ensure that the volunteer and your organisation get the best out of your relationship.   

​At CAN we have a range of factsheets offering expert advice and guidance on:  

• Volunteer policies 
• Advertising and recruitment 
• The law 
• Induction and training 
• Supporting and supervising. 

VCSE Sector updates 

In our latest VCSE COVID-19 update you’ll find key information about government guidance, volunteer recruiting, support for organisations, and some inspiring case studies. Read more here.

Watch the video! 

Norfolk’s VCSE sector has adapted rapidly to continue to deliver key services across the county, a great proportion of which are delivered by long-standing volunteers. Understandably, the celebratory events that usually accompany Volunteers’ Week are not happening, but it’s important to celebrate the valuable contribution that volunteers make across Norfolk.  So, to mark Volunteers’ Week and say a big ‘thank you’ to all those volunteers, the long-serving and the ‘newbies’ alike, Voluntary Norfolk has compiled a video featuring short presentations from some of the organisations that recruit and deploy the essential skills of volunteers. Watch ‘A message to all volunteers’ here.