Managing Volunteers

This one day course provides an excellent introduction to managing and supervising volunteers covering the skills, paperwork and processes needed to recruit, induct and support them. The course can be expanded to run as a series of half day sessions and can also be adapted to the specific needs of organisations who would like the session to be run in-house.

Areas covered

• What motivates people to volunteer
• The volunteer manager or supervisor’s role
• A model of volunteer involvement
• Volunteer rights and responsibilities
• Legal issues and volunteer policy and procedures
• Recruiting volunteers
• Health and safety issues
• Inducting, supervising and supporting volunteers
• Managing difficult volunteers.

This course could be run as part of a training programme or could be run in house. Although the course outlined here is designed as a one day session, it can be extended with topics looked at in more detail and run as a series of five or six half day sessions.

In-house courses

The course is designed to be flexible so that it can accommodate the specific needs of a particular organisation or agency. It can be an excellent way of bringing supervisors from different departments together to ensure a consistent approach to managing volunteers across the whole organisation.

Objectives

• To understand the motivations behind volunteering
• To understand what systems and procedures they should have in place
• To understand the “grey areas” relating to volunteers and the law
• To look at recruitment and induction procedures
• To ensure understanding of the concept of “Duty of Care” principles and risk assessment issues
• To look at methods of managing and supporting volunteers.

Target Audience

People working in the voluntary and community sector or for statutory agencies. The course can be adapted to suit particular needs.

Cost

From £250 + travel costs.