training

Apologies if this is a bit too sector specific - but I've just set up an Online Volunteer Training Bank for museums to use to develop in-house training for their volunteers (info below). Obviously the sessions were designed specifically for museums, but there might besome stuff there that's useful for other volunteer involving organisations.

There are woekshops on Disabilty Awareness, Child Protection, and Customer Care, which are a bit more generic.

Dear Mr Hope,

I raised a question at the recent Westminster Briefing concerning the funding of training for volunteer managers.  Comparing the £4m intended to cover training for both volunteers and volunteer managers (VMs) with the amount allocated to v; I asked whether the funding for training was adequate especially as politicians and society have such high expectations of the voluntary sector.

Your answer, quite rightly stated that £4m is a considerable sum although everyone would like it to be more.  You went on to say that Train to Gain is a demand led funding stream that could yield hundreds of millions in funded training to the sector.

Cancer Research UK, the charity I work for, already accesses some T2G funding and some European funding for the provision of retail related NVQs for shop volunteers and shop managers.  I am unaware of any provision for training in volunteer management even at a basic level.  The main obstacle to accessing T2G funding for volunteer management training is that a very high proportion of volunteer managers have more than level 2 qualifications indeed degree standard is the normal level of academic education for people who manage volunteers or volunteer programs.  Most roles in volunteering seem to ask for applicants to be "educated to degree standard".  The fact that many VMs will have been educated beyond level 2 does not mean that they automatically have the skills required to manage volunteers.

Here at AVM we've been staying up late working on a new AVM project- developing a wiki in volunteer management. The idea is to build a resource for volunteer managers which is free, open and community driven. The project itself is still pretty rough and ready- but we have a bunch of articles that are gradually growing. If you're interested put your name down in our community page, check out what's going on and how you can get involved.

One page on the wiki we'd currently really like to draw your attention to is a discussion paper we've drafted with a view to approaching the Office of the Third Sector about the future of training for volunteer managers. We'd love your input in this discussion and would welcome additions (ideas or points we've missed) to the article. 

I just found out about this new website called Experts in Volunteering managed by Greater London Volunteering. According to their site: