Charter Chatter- Equality and Diversity

posted by JenGLV on Thu, 10/06/2010 - 1:11pm

Many of you will have heard of London's Volunteer Management Charter

We've now developed Charter Chatter, where we'll look at a section of the Charter each month, starting with equality and diversity and give you a quick tip, information of resources available from our website as well as ask for your support and expertise through our resources wish list. We're inviting Volunteer Managers to discuss the issue further  on this forum.

This months discussion question is; How do you attract and support a diverse range of volunteers?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas, and even difficulties in previous experiences.

The more we share the more we learn, the more we learn the more we can achieve. (Sorry can't resist a little cheese ;-)

Thanks

Jen (Experts In Volunteering Team with GLV)


Forums: 
Volunteer Managers Skill Sharing

On Tue, 24/08/2010 - 12:46pm

Hi

My first comment on the forum. Just registered on the webiste a few minutes ago!

From my experience, attracting a diverse range of volunteers can take time, and requires extra effort. You will need to adopt community development prinicples, in reaching out to people and selling the positive message of volunteering, in terms of the benefits to the individual. What I try to promote is for managers to make time to 'get out there' in the community; linking with the social and community networks and groups.  For example, there is a strong volunteering ethic within faith groups. Building strong collaborations, e.g. through organising a joint local community event, with such groups could be a positive way of attracting diverse volunteers.  The Volunteer Centres can also be useful and can help link with various diverse groups. One must not always go for the 'easy option'. Organisations must be brave to 'step into the unknown', and raise awareness about their work with diverse groups, starting with your local area. Increasingly, people from minority groups are taken on volunteering, as a route to securing paid employment. To some, this may be a bit 'selfish', but I think one must find a way of working with this, and increase our effort in retaining volunteers, even if after they seek paid employment.

In the current economic and 'no-jobs' climate, this is the time to really work on increasing the diversity of volunteers, particularly within mainstream organisations, where the diversity of volunteers is still generally poor.

By Af10

On Fri, 10/09/2010 - 5:09pm

Hi Af10,

thanks for your  first comment and hopefully there'll be many more.

I think you're definately right that  the diversity of volunteers it is something that many organisations struggle with and really we do need to take that step into the unknown and try something that little bit new, after all if we keep using the same methods we will keep getting the same volunteers.

Best Wishes

 

By JenGLV