News Articles
Book your space at the Volunteers' Week Celebration
This event has taken place, you can read more about what happened here. A booking form is now available for the Volunteers' Week Celebration, Information and Promotion event taking place on Saturday 3 June 2023, 11am to 3pm in Nottingham's Arboretum. Please come along, and invite all your volunteers and colleagues to this event! This booking form (link downloads Word document) will not only save…
Employer Supported Volunteering
Dave Thomas, Volunteering Development Officer at NCVS writes... For many years, some employers from all sectors have been willing to give their staff paid time to take part in volunteering. Some voluntary and community organisations have embraced this and have involved volunteers effectively in this way. Others have found it very difficult, or even impossible, to engage with this kind of…
Vision for Volunteering – What does it mean for us?
Dave Thomas, Volunteering Development Officer at NCVS writes... From my own involvement in this process, I am fairly confident that this is not another top-down attempt to regulate volunteering.I was one of more than 350 people involved and Nottingham CVS was one of more than 300 organisations that attended some of the 14 workshops. I was also interviewed as part of the consultation. (I even…
Volunteer Recognition and Reward
Dave Thomas, Volunteering Development Officer at NCVS writes... One of the things that I try to drum into new Leaders of Volunteers is the importance of not turning volunteers into workers or employees by paying them. The legal position is that the only money volunteers can get is expenses to cover what is costs them to volunteer. This rule comes from both tax and benefits legislation. I also…
From Community Champion to Volunteer Coordinator
We interviewed our new colleague, Ebenezer, to learn about his volunteer journey and how he came to work with NCVSEbenezer first saw an article about the Community Champions Volunteer role with the Majority Black Led Churches (MBLC) project run by NCVS. He was particularly interested in the work the project was doing to engage with Black communities about Covid-19 vaccination misconceptions and…
Introducing Community Champions
Nottingham Community and Voluntary Service (NCVS) is working in partnership with the Nottingham City Council Public Health team and local NHS services to develop a team of Community Champions.Are you interested in a new volunteering opportunity or would you consider taking on additional volunteering to complement your current volunteer role?We are actively seeking volunteers to join a new network…
A review of Volunteer Passports
Dave Thomas, Volunteering Development Officer at NCVS writes... Over the very many years that I have been a Leader of Volunteers, the phrase “Volunteer Passport” has faded in and out of fashion. It has resurfaced on the national scene in reports produced before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Although I have never been a fan of this concept, I want to explore the positives and negatives of…
What is the impact of volunteering?
Dave Thomas, Volunteering Development Officer at NCVS writes... Whenever I go to network meetings or conferences, I enjoy a game of Buzzword Bingo as much as anyone. But there’s a word that has been creeping into the vocabulary of volunteering which deserves rather more than a tick on the bingo card. That word is “Impact”. It’s become very popular, although its meaning is sometimes a little…
What has the pandemic revealed about volunteering?
Two new reports have made the news in the last couple of weeks, and could influence the future governmental policy response to volunteering.The Royal Voluntary Service (RVS) surveyed 2,500 UK adults in its Volunteering for a Healthier Britain report. The study asked about the wellbeing, health, volunteering activity and social connectedness of people to understand whether it had been affected by…
Where have all the volunteers gone? (Long time passing)
Dave Thomas Volunteering Development Officer at NCVS writes... Like everyone else, Leaders of Volunteers have had to deal with the effects of the pandemic. Some of us have been able to keep our volunteers involved by moving roles online, home-based or over the phone. Others have created new roles. Some of us have had to suspend our volunteer programme, and our volunteers have either drifted away…
