Volunteering Bristol

New Service from Volunteering Bristol

Next VOF Meeting

9th December 200912noon—2.00pmVolunteering BristolGuest speaker from

Avon & Constabularyspeaking aboutinvolvingex-offenders

Hot Topic :What do you do torecognize volunteers?

VOF NEWSLETTERNovember 2009

Volunteering Bristol is pleased to be one of only twosuccessful applicants in the South West to be awardeda grant through Capacitybuilders to offer further direct,practical support to people who manage volunteers. Thisfollows on from gaining the BIG Lottery funded projectand confirms Volunteering Bristol’s position as a leadingvolunteering support organisation.

This additional support will be offered particularly tosmall and newly-established community groups inBristol. “This is an opportunity to give even moresupport to volunteer managers and their volunteers”says Paul Madine. “Funded until March 2011, it willallow us to recruit a full time advisor who will provide1-1 advice and guidance on identifying suitable roles forvolunteers. Volunteer managers and their volunteerswill be able to take coaching sessions to develop their skills, improving theirvolunteering experience and making it easier for organisations to recruit andretain people from more diverse groups.”

A particular feature of this new programme will be to develop guidance forvolunteer managers to use as part of the support needs assessment of newvolunteers. This helps to fill a gap identified by many volunteer managers duringthe research and consultation undertaken by Volunteering Bristol as part of theplanning of the project in the summer.

If you are interested in finding out more, contact Volunteering Bristol. It isplanned that the programme will be operational by mid December. In themeantime email us on paul@bristolvolunteers.co.uk or telephone 0117 989

Annual General Meeting

Volunteering Bristol’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) iscoming up on 16th December from 6.15pm in our offices offQueens Square. After the meeting guests can enjoyrefreshments including a glass of wine.

Please RSVP to support@bristolvolunteers.org.uk if you are interested inattending, to help us with numbers for refreshments.

Paul Madine,

Chief Executive of

Volunteering Bristol

New Service fromVolunteering Bristol

Annual General MeetingVolunteering Bristol

Next VOF Meeting

Volunteer ManagementTraining & ActionLearning

Christmas Volunteering

Volunteers Fair

Vetting and BarringScheme Info SessionTaking Minutes atMeetings

Model Job Description

Volunteering EnglandInformation Service

New Global Website

Volunteer Rights

In this issue:

With the season of goodwill fastapproaching, the VolunteerCentre gets lots of requests forvolunteering over the Christmasperiod. We would love to hear ifyou have any plans for Christmasfor which you could do with anextra pair of hands! Whether it’s aChristmas party, putting updecorations or dressing up as Santa there are lotsof willing volunteers who would love to help, soplease let us know if you have any opportunities.You don’t necessarily have to do a registration form,as long as we have a few lines of description.

Call for ChristmasVolunteering

Volunteer Management Training and Action Learning

Volunteering Bristol has started running itsVolunteer Management training with great successand high levels of attendance! So thanks foreveryone who has attended so far. We have runtraining on recruiting and retaining volunteers andare soon to put on training in ‘Improving theDiversity of your Volunteer Workforce’, ‘Volunteersand the Law’ and our new session ‘How to Dealwith Difficult Issues in Volunteer Management’.

There is still time to book onto these coursesthrough Voscur’s website www.voscur.org but ifyou are all booked up before Christmas thenwatch this space for sessions running again in theNew Year.

2010 also sees the arrival of the new ActionLearning Sets for Volunteer Managers! ActionLearning is a concept whereby people meettogether once a month for 6 months and each geta chance to work through problems in their pro-jects. The group then supportively works togetherto set actions to deal with these individualchallenges and learn from the experience ofothers in the group. The course of 6 sessionscosts £90 (usually £300) and there may be bur-saries available so we will keep you updated withdates once they are released.

There are currently 11.6 millionpeople in England whovolunteer every month.

Volunteers Fair a great successVolunteering Bristol’s Volunteer Recruitment Fair held in Upper Horfield Community Centre inSeptember was deemed a great success by exhibitors and public alike. More than 80 potentialvolunteers visited during the day on 24 th September, ensuring that the 17 local organisationswere kept busy dealing with enquiries. Several organisations were pleased to be able to turnthose enquiries into actual volunteer placements while others successfully raised awareness oftheir organisations and the work they do in their communities, as well as sowing the seeds forfuture volunteering, so thanks very much to everyone who got involved inthe day.

We will be holding another Volunteer Recruitment Fair in the New Year,this time in south Bristol. We hope that lots of organisations will join usagain.

Barton Hill Settlement Workshop arerunning a 1 day low cost training sessionon making minutes at meetings. It’saimed specifically at people in thevoluntary and community sector andcovers areas such as:

What minutes are for Different styles of minutes What to include and what to leave

out Tips for note-taking How to turn notes into minutes The language to use

The training takes place on 10th

November from 9.30am — 3pm at BartonHill Settlement, 43 Ducie Road, BartonHill, Bristol BS5 0AX and costs £30.

To book onto the course telephone0117 955 6971.

Information Session on new Vetting and Barring Scheme

checks out.

It will take place on 20th November from 9.15-2pm inLondon and costs £100 for Volunteering England mem-bers and £135 for non-members. See Volunteering Eng-land’s events page for more details: http://w w w . v o l u n t e e r i n g . o r g . u k / W h a t W e D o / E v e n t s /Volunteering+England+Events/Volunteering+safeguards-+an+information+session+on+your+role+and+responsibilities.htm

Please note: if you unable to make this meeting or do nothave the funds to attend then we will be trying to dosomething similar in Bristol in the future when we havemore information on the scheme. Presently we are waitingfor it to be reviewed.

Volunteering England are running an information session specifically on volunteering and theIndependent Safeguarding Authority’s (ISA) new Vetting and Barring Scheme.

The session will include high profile volunteer management experts covering what the Vettingand Barring Scheme is as well as the legal implications and what is involved in carrying these

Training Opportunity!Taking Minutes atMeetings

Model Job Description forVolunteer Co-ordinators

Volunteering England have recently revised the VolunteerCo-ordinator Job description on the Prospects websitewhich is aimed at graduates. You may find it interesting toview the description of the role from a general perspective,especially if your organisation is looking to employ a volun-teer co-ordinator in the future.

See the website here: http://www.prospects.ac.uk/p/types_of_job/volunteer_work_organiser_job_description.jsp

Have your sayDon’t forget to go to www.bristol.gov.uk/vcssupport to view information on Bristol City Council’sconsultation with the Voluntary and Community Sector about the support services that you need.

28% of people in the South West have

participated in regular volunteering. This is

higher than the national average of 23%.

There are currently 17.9 million

people in England who volunteer

at least once a year.

Volunteering England’s Information Service NewsVolunteering England’s Information Service is now only open to

Volunteering England members. This includes their telephone helpline,

email enquiries and the Good Practice Bank. If you are not a member of

Volunteering England, you can apply on their website or contact

Volunteering Bristol to get guidance on best practice in volunteer

New Global Website for Volunteer ManagementResources

Our Shared Resources has recently been launched as a websiteto help share resources from volunteering projects across theglobe. Rather than recreating the wheel, volunteer managers canlearn from other project’s policies and procedures and make iteasier to learn from good practice of other projects. To startsearching or posting your documents, visit the website http://www.oursharedresources.com/ .

Supported by Bristol City Council

VolunteeringBristol

Royal Oak HouseRoyal Oak Avenue

BristolBS1 4GB

Phone: 0117 989 7734Mobile: 0790 3837818

E-mail: jenny@bristolvolunteers.org.uk

Volunteering England to Examine VolunteerRights

Volunteering England are set to open an inquiry next monthinto the rights of volunteers following concerns aboutvolunteers having no legal rights, sometimes leading to unfairdismissals of volunteers. It is hoped that the inquiry will helpprotect volunteers from discrimination in the same way thatpaid staff are protected regarding issues such as gender,ethnicity and religious discrimination. This also coincides withthe proposal in the last VOF newsletter to include volunteersin the Single Equality Bill, showing a growing concern for therights of volunteers. To find out more see the Third Sectorw e b s i t e h t t p : / / w w w . t h i r d s e c t o r . c o . u k / N e w s /DailyBullet in/949968/Volunteering-England-examine-volunteer-rights/F46C58191D24F6D27965903A68486801/?DCMP=EMC-DailyBulletin

Welcome to the Team

We would like to warmly welcomeSarah Silcock into VolunteeringBristol. She will be assisting on theVolunteer Management Projectalongside Jenny Idle and helpingout with putting together VOFmeetings and the newsletter as wellas a variety of other admin tasks soyou’ll be seeing her at the back ofVOF meetings scribbling minutes inthe near future!

management. We are members of Volunteering England so

would be happy to enquire on behalf of volunteer-involving

organisations.