GoldStar - Snapshot Age Concern - Promoting good practice in managing volunteers from socially excluded groups

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GoldStar - Promoting good practice in managing volunteers from socially excluded groups

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Project	Description
Age Concern Gateshead Volunteering Project	Promoting welfare of older people

Age Concern Gateshead is a registered charity and company limited by guarantee. Since 1972 it has developed the provision of a varied range of services and activities for older people throughout Gateshead. The organisation currently has 20 staff and 190 volunteers, and approximately 1200 older people access their services every week.

The GoldStar volunteering project was a response to the growing need to recruit more volunteers and to reduce the burden on the managers of the individual projects run by Age Concern Gateshead who had previously had to do their own recruitment and training. The GoldStar Volunteering Project is effectively an in-house recruitment and training service provider. Its aims are to recruit, train and support a team of motivated and committed volunteers to enable the services and activities that are provided to continue and grow.

The Project brings a strategic approach to volunteering throughout the organisation, building on the volunteer related practices that have been developed and improved over the years, and to enhance the support and supervision of the volunteers.
The project has also begun to embrace the use of ICT in its work. This is exemplified by the use of IT to analyse the profile of the volunteer body in order to assess diversity. The Project is also developing IT systems to record volunteer data in order to improve quality and timeliness in the generation of management information.

The Project takes full advantage of the fact that Age Concern Gateshead operates a wide and varied set of services and activities. This is exemplified in a number of ways, particularly in enriching the volunteering experience and achieving a good match between volunteers and activities. It also allows the organisation to respond positively to evidence that individual volunteers may need to be retrained or reallocated in order to re-energise and motivate them. This approach also contributes to good rates of volunteer retention.

The Project’s strategy for recruitment includes measures to attract volunteers from communities that were previously under-represented on the volunteer body. This includes recognition that there are barriers to volunteering for many potential volunteers, and taking steps to diminish these, such as assisting with form filling and the provision of Skills for Life training. Other steps have been taken to improve the induction and training process in this regard.

Age Concern Gateshead attributes good retention rates for volunteers to the range of policies and actions that are designed to ensure that volunteers are always aware of how much they are valued. It is typical of their approach that birthday and Christmas cards are always sent to each volunteer. There are social events and the involvement of local dignitaries at award ceremonies. Volunteers were included with staff when the organisation was pursuing the Investors in People Award, thus linking external and internal recognition, and demonstrating high level commitment to training.

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