Yesterday, Monday 18th May, was a very busy day in the life of yours truly. This was the day that an ad for Volunteers appeared in the Metro so I was fielding calls and emails from interested applicants. We regularly advertise for Volunteers in the Metro and the Evening Standard as this is a free service that the papers offer to charities seeking to recruit volunteers. It’s brought us a great many volunteers, the only downside is that they are unable to inform you when the ad will be placed as they rely on ‘available space’. This means that I’m dealing with responses to the ad whilst juggling other balls.
In the morning I had scheduled an Induction training session with a new Reception Volunteer. The induction consists of numerous aspects – a detailed account of what ScotsCare and Borderline actually do, health and safety issues, confidentiality issues, a practical breakdown of how reception operates (phone system, franking, faxing, photo-copying, emailing) and showing the Volunteer around the building and introducing them to staff members and other Volunteers. So the morning reception shift which runs from 9am – 1pm was full-on to say the least.
As well as sending off application packs to potential Volunteers, Monday afternoon was taken up with a varied array of tasks. I’m in the process of co-ordinating a boat trip on the Thames for all our Volunteers for Friday 31st July. We held a boat trip last year which proved most successful and everyone wanted a repeat performance. But getting everything in place – negotiating the boat hire, the catering and informing Volunteers, staff and Trustees is another full-on task. You’ve also got a niggling worry that no-one will be able to make that date and be left with egg on your face (I had to rearrange the boat trip last year as the majority of our Volunteers were on holiday).
So if there are any Volunteers, Staff or Trustees reading this please put the 31st July in your diaries.
Cheers

As a person who recruits and trains Volunteers, you would be surprised how often I get asked this question. In the hustle and bustle of a credit crunch world, some people find it difficult to imagine giving their time and energy for free.

So why volunteer? Certainly, volunteering is great for our communities and it makes the world a better place; but could it actually make a positive impact on your life, too?

Build your confidence
For the individual, volunteering can contribute to that person’s sense of purpose and self-esteem, and may extend his or her skills and range of social contacts. For those who are unemployed, but still of working age, the experience of volunteering often provides a route back into paid work.

For ScotsCare, volunteering adds volume to the range of services on offer, and can improve the standards of those services e.g. they offer the prospect of feed-back from a perspective closer to that of service users. This in turn, should lead to more focused service provision.
Volunteers may also contribute to the effectiveness of the organisations services by engaging in representative roles e.g. befriending and raising awareness of the charity. Volunteers play an important part in the fight against social exclusion, whether through activities like befriending, directed towards those otherwise in danger of exclusion, or by the involvement of people who are at risk of being excluded themselves i.e. clients. Even a small commitment can have a lasting effect on an organisation and the people it represents.

Improve your health
There is evidence that volunteering can improve your health. In “The Healing Power of Doing Good”, author Allan Luks found medical and scientific documentation supporting the health benefits of volunteering, such as:
• a heightened sense of well-being
• an improvement in insomnia
• a stronger immune system
• speedier recovery from surgery

Boost your career options
A survey carried out by TimeBank through Reed Executive showed that among 200 of the UK’s leading businesses:
• 73% of employers would employ a candidate with volunteering experience over one without
• 94% of employers believe that volunteering can add to skills
• 58% say that voluntary work experience can actually be more valuable than experience gained in paid employment
• 94% of employees who volunteered to learn new skills had benefited either by getting their first job, improving their salary, or being promoted.
Additionally, volunteering lets you road test different kinds of work, giving you hands-on experience of how different professions operate.
Volunteering can bring you into contact with all kinds of professionals and people from every walk of life. In fact, the networking opportunities it can provide are among the least publicised but most exciting benefits of all. A good network can guide your career pathway right through life and help you take giant steps towards your ideal job.
Up to 60% of job vacancies are not advertised and end up being filled internally or through external networking.
All in all there are many reasons why you should volunteer. Have you thought about it?

I am the Volunteer Officer for ScotsCare. I recruit, interview, screen, train and then place all new Volunteers in our charity. We have various Volunteer opportunities in ScotsCare. The reception desk at the front of the main office in Covent Garden is staffed by a rotating shift of volunteers. The shifts last from 9am to 1pm and from 1pm to 5pm. The Reception Volunteers are given an Induction training when they first start and then myself and the Office Manager train them on the various administration duties that reception requires. Today, we had a new Volunteer on reception who is a retired Teacher and has just returned from a day’s external training on the ‘Outlook’ PC package which she found to be ‘extremely useful’.

The ScotsCare helpline is similarly staffed by Volunteers who start on Reception duties and then are sent on 3 levels of certified helpline training with The Telephone Helpline Association. The Volunteers are then trained up to use our in-house database.

Volunteers are also an integral part of our Social Events including the lunches that take place regularly in Euston and Bloomsbury. Trained in Certified ‘Food Hygiene’ they help serve the lunches and clean up afterwards.

The Volunteer Befriending Scheme is another main aspect of the Volunteer Programme in ScotsCare. Volunteers are given Induction Training before being placed with an elderly and/or disabled client who is socially isolated. The Volunteers visit their clients once a week and this service has been shown to greatly improve the quality of life for the clients as the Befrienders are often the lifeline to the wider community.

We currently have 57 active Volunteers in ScotsCare and for a small charity we are grateful for the continuous and passionate interest in our Volunteer Programme.