6 Summary

Your work this week should have given you some broader context about volunteering in which to understand your own role, if you are a volunteer or thinking about volunteering. If you are responsible for recruiting or inducting volunteers, then you also have some practical points to draw on, which you could use to increase your pool of volunteers or motivate and retain them.

In Week 2, you have learned:

• what volunteering is and why voluntary organisations rely on volunteers
• the different ways that organisations recruit volunteers
• how to write a volunteer role description
• the importance of induction
• the importance of motivation in retaining volunteers
• how the psychological contract theory can be applied to volunteering.

Next week you will explore the role of marketing and communicating clearly with stakeholders and others.