Category Archives: Do I really want to volunteer?

This is my volunteering philosophy, do you agree?

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I believe that we volunteer for our own gain AND to make things we believe in happen.

 

Our volunteering gives us a sense of purpose, camaraderie, and enjoyment. And we benefit by developing our skills, meeting new people and expanding our lives.

The best volunteering situations encourage volunteers to take on only what they can do in the time available ….. and they deliver. The organisation and the individual communicate openly and honestly and the individual can ask for help.

There are some people who take on voluntary roles for other motives, maybe because they want the status associated with the post or because they want to get a “toe in the door”. In my experience, volunteers like this do not fit in well. They don’t support the team as effectively as volunteers who are genuinely interested in what they are doing. And I’m sure they don’t derive the same satisfaction for themselves.

Volunteers are making a serious commitment to do a job – albeit an unpaid one, and should be treated as seriously and professionally as paid employees.

I agree with Matthew Taylor (RSA) in his “A Formula for Volunteering” that the word volunteer encompasses such a wide range from seriously responsible public roles to micro-volunteering that it is time that we developed a more helpful vocabulary. I would love to see a new word that recognises the professional nature of many volunteer posts and one that helps shake off the old, charitable “do goody” image. Please post any ideas.

This is my volunteering philosophy. Do you agree?

Giving and gaining

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Friday 17th May is Give & Gain Day

This is a National day when companies support their employees to get out and volunteer in the comgive_and_gain_day_2013-100x142munity. It is organised by Business in the Community.

“It’s set to be a record breaking year here in the UK – we’re currently sitting at 12,000 business volunteers, 300 companies, approximately 96,000 volunteer hours and £1.5 million worth of support for UK communities.” said Tom Gater of Give & Gain.

Give & Gain Day encourages thousands of people across the globe to spend a working day volunteering for good causes in their local community. Since 2008, over 60,000 people in 31 countries around the world have taken part.

Give & Gain Day connects skilled professionals with community organisations by matching them with a volunteering project, offering invaluable support in tough times. Business volunteers will help in schools, day centres, and youth groups, doing everything from school sports days, to employability workshops and CV training for the long term unemployed.

Focus on Young People

The 2013 event takes place against the backdrop of increasing pressures on local services, with recent figures suggesting that 1 in every 6 charities are at risk of closing. With the level of unemployment among 18-24 year olds sitting at a worryingly high 21.1%, this year Give & Gain Day has a focus on supporting young people.

Paul Turner, Group Community & Sustainable Business Director at Lloyds Banking Group said: “One of the best ways businesses can support their local communities is by encouraging employees, customers and suppliers to use their skills and time through volunteering. We are deeply committed to playing an active part in the communities where we live, work and do business. Colleagues across the Lloyds Banking Group volunteer throughout the year, but Give & Gain Day provides the perfect focal point.”

Simon Lucas, Managing Director of recruitment and executive search firm Society, comments “I think the impact Give & Gain Day can have on local communities is really profound. There’s the short term benefits of community organisations getting an event run or a mural painted, but there’s also a fundamental exchange happening. Businesses are getting exposed to the issues that community organisations on their doorstep are having to grapple with, the community organisations are getting exposed to business ways of thinking and acting.”

Give & Gain Day volunteers are in good company, joining a global movement of thousands of volunteers across 25 countries as diverse as Spain, Iran, Nigeria and Switzerland.

Sponsored by Lloyds Banking Group and Society and in association with BT, Give & Gain Day 2013 is dedicated to getting thousands of employees out of the office, store or factory to volunteer in their local communities. By making volunteering fun, accessible and inspirational BITC believes that it is something all businesses should give their staff an opportunity to do in work time.

If you are taking part in Give & Gain day tomorrow please leave a comment – we would love to hear what you’ve done:

One weekend in April, two UK events attracted similar numbers of runners; one of them was the London Marathon

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marathon medals

Cast your mind back to the Virgin London Marathon coverage on TV. Can you hear the music? Can you see the masses of bobbing heads filing through the starts? It is a pretty impressive site on TV and even more so if you actually go and line the route to cheer on the runners. On the 21st April I was lucky enough to be volunteering at the point that is the highlight for everyone that completes a marathon – the finish. As part of the team that collects the timing chips and presents the runners with their medals, we experience marathon emotion at its most acute. Hanging medals brings you very close and personal to the elated, sweaty, tearful faces. We were putting medals round necks at a rate of 240 per minute at the busiest time and in total, the London Marathon counted 34,256 runners through the finish.

The day before another running phenomenon in the UK did not make the headlines and was not on TV. It had 34,881 finishers*. These runners had run 5k not 26.2 miles. The finish line was actually 196 different finish lines all over the UK. But never-the-less more runners completed a parkrun on Saturday 20th April than completed the London Marathon on Sunday the 21st.

I am enormously proud to be part of the parkrun movement that is sweeping the country and empowering volunteers to set up timed 5k runs for their local community (see “The Volunteering phenomenon of the decade”). These events are non-elitist, friendly and informal. And they are bringing communities together.

On the weekend of 20-21st April 2013, two events took place in the UK that involved similar numbers of runners. One of them was the Virgin London Marathon. But if you know someone who might like a friendly, local 5k to start with, tell them about parkrun!

*Number is total parkrunners worldwide, with the majority in the UK

 

 

Make a resolution to do something for yourself

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… by volunteering?

Forbes Ten Resolutions The Most Successful People Make And Then Keep

#4 Resolve to find your purpose

“Starting a career, a company or any kind of journey that is based firmly on your purpose is foundational to success and happiness. If you don’t know your ……purpose, finding one is the worthiest of resolutions.”

A good way to find your purpose is by volunteering. What are you passionate about? What do you care enough about to want to change? Could you volunteer to make something you believe in happen in 2013?

#5 Resolve to support a cause

“If you’re reading this, chances are you are one of the rare people who know how to start things. Fortunately, there are people like you who have already started causes that make the world better—they feed the hungry; they save the rain forest; they fight cancer; they do good things. There is virtually a cause for everyone, and contributing will make your year happier. Promise.”

Good causes need time as well as money. How about supporting your cause by donating some of your time in 2013?

Whatever you do, I wish you a happy and fulfilled 2013.

 

Volunteering experience counts – put it on your CV

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Recent University research has identified that recruiters value relevant volunteering experience as much as paid work experience. This is good news for volunteers, whatever their age. So make sure you include your relevant experience on your CV and job application. Read more about this research on the British Psychological Society’s Blog.

In an earlier blog post, I asked How can you get a job without having an interview? It is exciting to see this anecdotal evidence, of the benefits of gaining relevant experience and skills as a volunteer, now backed up by research.

Wilkin, C., & Connelly, C. (2012). Do I Look Like Someone Who Cares? Recruiters’ Ratings of Applicants’ Paid and Volunteer Experience International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 20 (3), 308-318 DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2389.2012.00602.x

10 more inspiring quotes for volunteers

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“I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.” Helen Keller.

Thank you vInspired for 8 inspiring quotes for volunteers who make a difference.These words sum up so succinctly how I feel, that I was motivated to make a list of 10 of my favourite quotes. Here they are:

  • “One person can make a difference, and everyone should try” John F Kennedy
  • “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.” Mark Twain
  • “When nothing in your life matters more than your own success you’ll likely have nothing in your life but your own success”  Steve Keating
  • “Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.” John F. Kennedy
  • “A river cuts through rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence.” Jim Watkins
  • “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” Winston Churchill
  • “Be the change you want to see in the world”. Mahatma Gandhi
  • “Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together” Vincent Van Gogh
  • “What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others” Pericles
  • “Make things that you believe in happen” Me

Can we really deliver an Olympic Sporting Legacy?

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If you want to have a go at athletics or hockey – or your kids want to take up cycling, rugby or football you will probably go to your local club. But this club will almost certainly be run by volunteers and will quite likely be close to reaching capacity. So, if we want to deliver a real sporting legacy of more children and adults taking up new sports, we need to find ways of building capacity.

I am proposing that we need a much more effective system for attracting and training volunteers to deliver entry-level sport.

Here is my idea: we don’t need senior (Level 3) coaches to deliver introductory sessions to newcomers – what we need are suitably trained volunteers that can inspire beginners and give them a positive and correct introduction to the sport. We should be putting much more emphasis in recruiting and training club helpers and new coaches to cope with Olympic-generated demand and free up the experienced coaches to concentrate on coaching elite club members. A good example of an effective training programme is England Athletics’ one-day “Leadership in running fitness” course.

Inspiration

The Olympic Games Makers have done wonders for the image of volunteering. If we can’t get sport volunteers to step forward now we never will. We need to build on the enthusiasm that we have from the Olympics to inspire volunteers to get involved and provide a pathway for them to do this. We should be making it easy for a dad to help at a cycling club or a university student to train as an athletics coach.

Recruitment

Clubs need coaches and team managers – and they also need volunteers to put out equipment, look after kit, manage membership systems and do a range of small jobs that you might not think of. If you are a club – how do you advertise these vacancies beyond your membership? If you are a potential volunteer, would you know where to look to get involved?

Welcome and preparation

Volunteers need to be nurtured. If they offer to help a club they should be welcomed with open arms and they need to know exactly what their job involves. Newcomers to coaching need to be trained by attending an Introductory or a Level 1 coaching course. As a minimum for certain roles they need to have safeguarding training. There is helpful Information on coaching courses here: http://sportscoachuk.org/

A fair relationship

Volunteers are entitled to enter into a fair relationship with the organisation they are supporting. The club needs a commitment from the volunteer to turn up at the agreed times and deliver. In turn, the volunteer needs to be properly managed and looked after. If we are to retain good volunteers they need:

  • affordable training – it’s right that volunteers make some investment in their own training, but £150 for a Level 1 Coaching course is a deterrent for many
  • a schedule that is workable for them and the club – volunteers have limited time available and fear of being asked to do too much is one of the major factors that puts people off volunteering. One idea: could a new helper be paired with another volunteer to job-share?
  • to be supervised and mentored – new coaches and other helpers need a contact they can turn to for ideas and advice
  • to be kept informed of how the part they are playing fits into what the club is doing as a whole

Clubs have needs too

In turn, the clubs are also going to need practical support to find and look after new volunteers. There is information on http://www.clubmark.org.uk/ about managing volunteers including an outline job description for a volunteer coordinator. This is a key post and one that needs to be filled by an enthusiastic and capable leader.

There is hope

Sport England has set up Sport Makers: http://www.sportmakers.co.uk/  as the official London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic sports legacy. They are aiming to recruit 40,000 volunteers to help make sport happen. If you are looking to volunteer in sport then go to this website today!

The last word

Much of sport in the UK is currently delivered through clubs. These clubs need more volunteers to increase capacity for new participants.  I sincerely hope that we can harness the inspiration and deliver volunteers to the sports clubs to make sure we really do make the most of the buzz we are experiencing after an amazingly successful Olympic Games.

“Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.”  Let’s make our Olympic Sporting Legacy happen.

Please leave a comment with your legacy thoughts and ideas.

 

3 ways to be the perfect volunteer

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1. Take on a role you feel happy to do

Start with a modest role that you can tackle confidently. You are aiming for something that gives you the right amount of buzz and avoids any sinking feeling of being overwhelmed.

2. Do it on time

Find out what the deadlines are before you say “yes” and then meet them. Other people will be depending on your timeliness and being late is being unfair to them. If something happens in your life that genuinely gets in the way, then let someone know early so they they can make other arrangements. Don’t put off giving bad news! Worrying and waiting until the deadline has passed and only revealing your problems when someone contacts you does not help anyone.

3. Enjoy it

Do your task with good grace and a smile. Enjoy the company of other volunteers and collaborate with them. This makes the job more fun all round. Feel a sense of satisfaction in what you achieve and do not allow yourself to be pressurised into doing more than you agreed and don’t feel guilty for saying “no”.