Barnardos Midlands

Name of Organisation

Barnardo’s Midlands Region

Why did you decide to go for Investing in Volunteers?

1. An opportunity to look at our practice & measure it against an external benchmark, in order to see where we needed to improve.
2. In the hopes that it might attract more volunteers & partner agencies to become involved with us (positioning).

What benefits have you found from working towards Investing in Volunteers?

Being region-wide, we decided the best approach was to ask each locality that involved volunteers to complete a “self-assessment” and then to pull these together to determine the regional picture. This exercise was invaluable

• in showing where our practice was good
• in showing where our practice needed improvement
• in terms of attitude – a huge willingness & desire to do things well/better rather than resistance. Most encouraging! We now feel that, though there’s still room for improvement, we have improved things for our volunteers and volunteer managers (for e.g. in terms of advice & support available to the latter).

Tell us about your experience of the assessment process in your organisation.

A huge logistics exercise! One assessor, about 70 volunteers & staff, 5 locations, 5 days…! In the event, it all went well – only one not turning up.

Phone interviews were a great help for those who wanted to take part & lived too far from one of the 5 venues. Also the questionnaire was great – allowing a wider range of views & participation/ownership by our volunteers.

Our assessor was wonderful – personable, putting people at ease etc – and able to talk on the appropriate level to each interviewee, from a volunteer with learning difficulties to the Regional Director.

5 Practical tips you would give another organisation working towards Investing in Volunteers

• Get a steering group together to support the process
• Keep colleagues informed at all stages
• Block time out in your diaries to self-assess, to work through the actions in the development plan, etc – and don’t let other things over-ride this time
• Don’t underestimate how much planning is needed for the assessment interview process
• Don’t underestimate how powerful it is for your volunteers to be included in this!