volunteering
Are you an organisation that recruits and involves volunteers?
The Volunteer Centre:
* Promotes volunteering and encourages individuals to become active volunteers
* Helps people who wish to volunteer find a role to suit them
* Aims to support organisations in their search for suitable volunteers
* Offers advice and support to organisations in themanagement and support of volunteers
* Campaigns on issues to do with volunteering
Brokerage / Signposting:
The Volunteer Centre in Harrogate provides a "brokerage" service. We aim to help organisations find volunteers from the Harrogate and Knaresborough area to suit their needs.
* We provide potential volunteers with information about voluntary roles that we are aware of, and with contact details for all the organisations we support.
* We do not directly recruit volunteers or have a bank of volunteers that can be called on for one off tasks.
Registering with the Volunteer Centre
The Volunteer Centre holds a comprehensive database of volunteering opportunities in the Harrogate & Knaresborough Area. This database informs a series of listings:
* The "green book" - an alphabetical listing of most of the organisations registered with the Centre - given to all potential volunteers.
* Specialist Listings covering different types of activity such as charity shops, working with children, working with the environment etc.
The database also feeds information to the National Volunteering Webstie - http://www.do-it.org.uk/.
Registering your volunteer needs on our database requires you to complete our database forms - please request these from the Centre if you are not already in receipt of them. Once registered you will be sent an annual update. If you are aware of significant changes before the update is due please keep us informed so that we can do our best to send you appropriate volunteers.
Will the Volunteer Centre find me all the Volunteers I need?
We promote volunteering as widely as possible. Currently we expect about 350 new people to contact us per year, most of whom will end up actively volunteering. But we cannot guarantee to fill your volunteer needs - we support over a hundred organisations and believe that volunteers will only be useful if they are doing something they want to do - we can't force them to volunteer for you!
We can offer advice on your own recruitment campaigns in person or through our resource library.
Will the Volunteer Centre screen Volunteers on our behalf?
If a volunteer who has contacted us chooses to volunteer for you they will normally make contact with you in person to explore your volunteer roles further. Before you take them on you will need to interview them to ensure they are suitable (and that your role will suit them), and then take up references and apply for CRB disclosure if appropriate.
Other Services from the Volunteer Centre
The E-network: if you are contactable by e-mail we are able to keep you informed of a wide range of information relevant to working with volunteers as we become aware of it.
Volunteer Co-ordinators & Managers Network Meetings: A good way to get together with others doing a similar job to yourself, and to access information and resources that can help you with your recruitment and management of volunteers.
VolCanO: The Newsletter for Volunteer Managers and Organisers - sent out bi-monthly to CVS affiliates (more details about CVS affiliation from Angela Jones Tel 01423 504074 email angela@harrogate.org )
Training: Click here to download our Volunteer Management training program for Autumn 2008
Resources: The Community House Information Library has a section dedicated to managing and supporting volunteers available for loan, and the VC produces a wide range of information papers. We also have some training materials. A resource list is available.
Information: We aim to deal with any queries about recruiting, managing or supporting volunteers - if we don't know the answer we probably know someone who does!
Your Contact at the Volunteer Centre:
Harriet Bisson,
Volunteer Centre Manager
Harrogate & Area Volunteer Centre
Community House
46-50 East Parade
Harrogate HG1 5RR
Tel: 01423 509004
Fax: 01423 502126
e-mail: volunteer@harrogate.org