Experts in Volunteering: leaving a legacy....

Experts in Volunteering: leaving a legacy
Anne Layzell, Development Manager, Experts in Volunteering Project writes:
Big Lottery funded project Experts in Volunteering came to a close at the end of May. The brainchild of Greater London Volunteering (GLV), it has been promoting best practice in volunteer management. GLV and its partner organisations, including all of London’s Volunteer Centres, have collaborated to develop an outreach process, and to deliver action learning and training for people who manage volunteers. London Funders was one of many organisations that endorsed this work by signing up to the Volunteer Management Charter which the project developed.

The project received an additional £10,000 of Big Lottery Supporting Change funding in March and immediately got cracking on using it. The first tangible result is an attractively branded memory stick, bearing the funder’s logo, loaded with all the documents and resources that a good practice worker needs to take a volunteer manager through the process of improving or tweaking their volunteering programme. There is plenty of storage room on the stick, so a worker can carry it with them and store other work documents, too.

The memory sticks – and the continuing work – were handed over to GLV members at a recent event to celebrate the project’s achievements. It is not a new idea, but GLV was surprised by the overwhelmingly positive feedback: people really like the little ‘gift’ of a memory stick with attractively presented data, rather than being emailed a pile of documents.

For more information about the project, volunteer management advice, or the memory stick mini project: info@glv.org.uk; 020 7953 7317; www.expertsinvolunteering.org.uk