Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better
What does excellence look like and how will you know if you’re there yet?
Don’t worry, your volunteers will let you know! Volunteers who feel valued and an integral part of your organisation will be more actively engaged and committed, and stay longer with you.
Excellence is a quality we really appreciate because it stands out from the crowd as being better than the norm. Leaders of Volunteers who embrace this frame of mind are constantly looking for ways to improve and adapt to the changing landscape of volunteering: They want to create diverse and inclusive programmes that exceed the expectations of their volunteers.
Going from Good to Great
What do your volunteers think of the programme at the moment?
Current turnover levels are a good indicator of satisfaction levels. Take every opportunity to get feedback from volunteers on their experience – from conversations and check-ins, surveys and exit interviews. A good understanding of what’s working well and what could be improved will help you develop a programme tailored to your volunteers’ motivations, needs and expectations.
Great progammes support a volunteer’s growth and development, recognise their contribution and offer a range of options to facilitate their schedule, such as once-off or short-term projects and remote or virtual roles.
Here are some ideas for recognising volunteers
Best Practice in Volunteer Management
Implementing best practice in Volunteer Management will ensure you have a solid structure in place to support volunteers at every stage of their journey, from recruitment, induction and training, carrying out their role, to ultimately finishing up with you.
The Volunteer Centre offers a range of training and supports, as well as a toolkit of resources and templates on our website, to help you.
Quality Standards
Setting goals and minimum standards will give you something to aim for and help with planning for the development. There are a couple of accredited programmes available.
- Investing in Volunteers (IiV), the national quality standard for good practice in volunteer management, provides a framework to benchmark the quality of your volunteer programme.
- Volunteer Friendly (VF) is new quality standard to support, recognise and reward small to medium sized groups and organisations. Currently at pilot stage, we hope to be officially launching in late 2022.
Resources
- Watch: Barbara Kilbride talking about the St Francis Hospice Volunteer Programme
- What Every Volunteer Manager Needs to Know: A Lesson in Leadership (VolunteerPro)
- Guide to Writing Better Volunteer Surveys (VolunteerPro)
For further information and advice, please contact Support@volunteerdublincity.ie