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Working in the voluntary sector

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More about this course

Have you been thinking about volunteering or working in the voluntary sector and want to find out more about it? Do you already work or volunteer and are seeking to build on your existing knowledge or skills? Do you have a general interest in voluntary organisations? Are you looking to develop your study skills for further learning? If you answered 'yes' to any of these questions this course is for you.

This course is introduced by Martha Lane Fox, the Chancellor of The Open University and a significant figure in the voluntary sector.

This free online course, Working in the voluntary sector, will introduce you to some of the main activities carried out by volunteers and staff, will give you some background on how different organisations work and will provide you with knowledge and skills you can apply to your own work or volunteering, as well as to your every day life.

Enrolling on the course will give you the opportunity to earn an Open University digital badge. Badges are not accredited by The Open University but they're a great way to demonstrate your interest in the subject and commitment to your career, and to provide evidence of continuing professional development.

Once you are signed in, you can manage your digital badges online from My OpenLearn. In addition, you can download and print your OpenLearn statement of participation - which also displays your Open University badge.

The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our optional start-of-course survey. Once you complete the course we would also value your feedback and suggestions for future improvement, in our optional end-of-course survey. Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.

This course is endorsed by the CPD Standards Office ³⁴⁰. It can be used to provide evidence of continuing professional development but is not accredited learning. We are unable to provide formal learner verification services for participation in our open online courses, which are provided freely by The Open University as self-directed CPD. Anyone wishing to provide evidence of their enrolment on this course is able to do so by sharing their Activity Record on their OpenLearn Profile, which is available before completion of the course and earning of the Statement of Participation.

Learning outcomes

After completing this course, you will be able to:

demonstrate an understanding of different roles and activities in voluntary organisations
understand how to work with other staff and volunteers in a team or organisation
use and apply knowledge of the voluntary sector to work or volunteering experience
link this learning with personal or career goals.

Earn this free Open University digital badge if you complete this course! The badge can be displayed, shared and downloaded as a marker of your achievement. The badge is awarded for completing the course and passing the quizzes.

First Published: 17/11/2015

Updated: 09/01/2020

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You can start this course right now without signing-up. Click on any of the course content sections below to start at any point in this course.
If you want to be able to track your progress, earn a free Statement of Participation, and access all course quizzes and activities, sign-up.

Course content

- Introduction and guidance
- Current section:
  Introduction and guidance
  Working in the voluntary sector is a free badged course that lasts eight weeks, with approximately three hours’ study time each week. You can work through the course at your own pace, so if you have more time one week there is no problem with pushing on to complete another week’s study.There may be several reasons for you studying this course – perhaps you’ve been thinking about volunteering or working in the voluntary sector and wanted to find out more about it; or y...
  - What is a badged course?
  - How to get a badge
- Acknowledgements
- week1Week 1: Getting started – working in a voluntary organisation
- Current section:
  Introduction
  Welcome to the first week of Working in the voluntary sector. This course explores the roles and activities that people carry out within voluntary organisations, either as paid staff or as volunteers. The term ‘working’ in the course title refers to both paid and unpaid work, which, after all, can be equally classed as ‘work’.What is your role? If you work in an organisation, what is your role within that? If you don’t, what is your role in your family, your com...
- 1 Jobs, tasks and roles
  - 1.1 What’s in a role?
  - 1.2 Formal and informal roles
- 2 Influences on role
- 3 Roles and functions of voluntary organisations
  - 3.1 Purpose of a voluntary organisation
- 4 Influences on voluntary organisations
- 5 This week’s quiz
- 6 Summary
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week 1 practice quiz
- week2Week 2: Working with volunteers
- Current section:
  Introduction
  Volunteers are the lifeblood of the voluntary sector, and many organisations would not be able to operate without their help and support. People volunteer in many roles, including being a trustee, or helping with operational activities such as assisting in a charity shop, fundraising, organising events, gardening, administration, caring for elderly people or children, and so on.Last week you explored what roles mean in the context of work and volunteering, as well as in other settings. This...
- 1 Why do voluntary organisations need volunteers?
- 2 Recruiting volunteers
- 3 Induction and training
- 4 Retaining and motivating volunteers
- 5 This week’s quiz
- 6 Summary
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week 2 practice quiz
- week3Week 3: Introducing marketing and communications
- Current section:
  Introduction
  Effective marketing is crucial to the success of all voluntary and community organisations. In order to survive and thrive, voluntary organisations need to communicate and build relationships with many groups. These will include not only existing donors, supporters, volunteers and clients but also potential funders, donors, clients and others who might promote and support the organisation’s cause. An organisation’s communications might include, for example, a newsletter for volun...
- 1 What is marketing?
- 2 Understanding communication
  - 2.1 The communication process
- 3 What do you want to say?
- 4 Keeping your audience in mind
- 5 Getting your audience’s attention and interest
- 6 Persuading people to take action
  - 6.1 Style and image
- 7 This week’s quiz
- 8 Summary
- References
- Further reading
- Acknowledgements
- Week 3 practice quiz
- week4Week 4: Working with financial information
- Current section:
  Introduction
  Every voluntary organisation, no matter how small, needs to consider the role of financial information in its operations; that is, the money it has coming in and the costs involved in paying staff, running services and projects, rent, utilities, and so on. People often think it is the accountants or other specialist financial staff who are in charge of finances but, in reality, many staff, trustees and volunteers have some input into managing financial information, fundraising and setting bu...
- 1 Finance, rules and regulations
  - 1.1 The role of trustees in financial management
  - 1.2 Financial statements
- 2 Sources of income
- 3 What is a budget?
  - 3.1 What are budgets used for?
  - 3.2 Different types of budget
- 4 Interpreting budgets
  - 4.1 Expenditure and costs
- 5 Balancing the budget
- 6 This week’s quiz
- 7 Summary
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week 4 compulsory badge quiz
- week5Week 5: Introducing fundraising
- Current section:
  Introduction
  All voluntary organisations need funds to achieve their aims and carry out their activities. As you saw in Week 4, funds come from a variety of sources, from donations to contracts, and many involve considerable effort, such as writing applications and nurturing relationships with individuals and organisations. Some organisations have staff and departments whose main responsibility is to carry out all aspects of fundraising, whereas smaller organisations or groups tend to involve all their s...
- 1 What is fundraising?
- 2 Asking individuals for money
- 3 Asking other organisations for money
  - 3.1 The role of planning in obtaining resources
- 4 Challenges of fundraising
- 5 Skills needed for fundraising
  - 5.1 Learning from the fundraising process
- 6 This week’s quiz
- 7 Summary
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week 5 practice quiz
- week6Week 6: Effective meetings
- Current section:
  Introduction
  Meetings are used to coordinate and plan work, to make decisions, to monitor progress, to consult with volunteers or users of the organisation’s services, to give support and for many other reasons. In the past, meetings often took place in formal settings, such as offices and meeting rooms, and nearly always involved people meeting ‘face to face’. Times have changed though, and you have probably experienced sitting in a café hearing people nearby taking part in a me...
- 1 Meetings: good and bad
  - 1.1 Why have meetings?
- 2 Types of meeting
- 3 Planning a meeting
- 4 Chairing meetings
- 5 Taking part
- 6 Recording and following up meetings
- 7 This week’s quiz
- 8 Summary
- Acknowledgements
- Week 6 practice quiz
- week7Week 7: Working in teams and partnerships
- Current section:
  Introduction
  A team is a group of people working together to achieve a common goal. The idea of ‘belonging to a team’ can be very appealing – it conjures up images of everyone working together well, knowing their role within the team and working towards a shared purpose. Teams do not just ‘gel’ overnight, however – team building takes time and there is usually someone in the role of team manager or leader facilitating the process. Sometimes teams do not function well a...
- 1 What is a team?
  - 1.1 What makes a team effective?
- 2 Team roles
- 3 Building a team
  - 3.1 Stages of team development
  - 3.2 Team conflict
- 4 Working in partnership
  - 4.1 Why do organisations work in partnership?
  - 4.2 Barriers to partnership working
- 5 This week’s quiz
- 6 Summary
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week 7 practice quiz
- week8Week 8: Understanding stress and conflict
- Current section:
  Introduction
  Working for voluntary organisations has many rewards – not least the feeling that you are doing something worthwhile. However, there can be aspects of working in voluntary organisations that can make it stressful and difficult. Many of the ideals of the sector, such as the participation of service users and beneficiaries or the strong value commitments that people hold, bring excitement and a feeling of passion on the part of those involved. Sometimes, however, the features of voluntar...
- 1 What is stress?
  - 1.1 Causes of stress
  - 1.2 Causes of stress in the voluntary sector
- 2 Coping with stress
- 3 What is conflict?
  - 3.1 What does conflict look like?
  - 3.2 Causes of conflict
    - Multi-layered conflict
- 4 Coping with conflict
- 5 Understanding conflict constructively
- 6 This week’s quiz
- 7 Summary
- Tell us what you think
- Where next?
- References
- Further reading
- Acknowledgements
- Week 8 compulsory badge quiz

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Working in the voluntary sector Unit content
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