Influencing Up: a guide for gaining executive support for Voluntering and Volunteer Management

This guide was written by Volunteering England (now merged with NCVO). Their aim was to support people who manage volunteers ,in gaining executive support for volunteering and volunteer management.

Involving Volunteers

Getting the right people (and enough of them!) and keeping them is one of the basic challenges of working with volunteers.

Voluntary Action LeicesterShire (VAL) have recently revamped their website and now have a really excellent online section on involving volunteers. It is divided into three online guides:

1. Involving volunteers: background and planning
2. How to recruit and welcome volunteers: this guide looks at ways of making volunteers feel welcome from the first contact with your organisation so the experience is a succesful one for the volunteer and yourselves.
3. How to manage volunteers: including issues around support and supervision and the tricky issue of managing performance issues in volunteers.

At the end of each guide there is a further resources section which include some basic proformas you might need if you are involving volunteers.