4.2 ‘What have I achieved?’

Volunteers have told us that they want to have a sense of satisfaction that they have achieved something; that their contribution of time and effort has been of value. Earlier, the course highlighted the importance of the link between an individual volunteer’s values and the values of a group or an organisation. These values are only meaningful if they are put into practice. For volunteers to understand what they have achieved you need to know what difference is being made by their contribution and then share this with volunteers.

To know what difference is being made you need to consider what you want to know. It is important to recognise the difference between the impact of volunteers, and the impact on volunteers. Often the impact on volunteers is positive and relates to the development of new skills, a growth in confidence or a feeling of personal satisfaction. Sometimes, though, the impact on volunteers can be negative, such as being put in a difficult situation without support or feeling stuck in a role and unable to change.

The impact of volunteers refers to the impact volunteers themselves have on the service delivered; for instance, the difference their contribution has made to service users. You might need to know this to demonstrate the added value that involving volunteers brings to your organisation.

Once you’ve decided what you want to know, you will have to decide how you will find this out. You will be able to get lots of useful information to demonstrate your impact by monitoring certain aspects of your delivery. Remember to collect and document this information as you go along. There is more information on the Volunteer Scotland website [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .

In this video, Lisa talks about the value of knowing how often the Community Garden is used and how many volunteers have contributed.

Download this video clip.Video player: Lisa, Co-convenor, Polbeth and West Calder Community Garden. All rights reserved.

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Transcript: Lisa, Co-convenor, Polbeth and West Calder Community Garden. All rights reserved.

Lisa

So we have to produce an annual report every year and one of the reasons that that’s so important is the council has given us this site rent free, for our lease, the duration of our 25 years lease, but one of our provisos is that we must demonstrate community benefits to the tune of £4,000 per year. So we do quite detailed analysis of the number of volunteers that are accessing the site and kinda improving the site and also the kinda of hours they are putting in, hours that other groups are putting in, so for example, Royal Bank of Scotland staff come down on corporate work days with the conservation volunteers. So that’s a huge impact as well and just opening the site up and making it available including building. So we are now hosting meetings, other groups are using it for meeting space as well. So there is a range of uses which benefit the wider community and we know from the stats that the building has been opened and in use for 250 days out of the last year. So that’s really important to us that it isn’t just used by a small group of volunteers on a sporadic basis, it’s being used most days and sometimes it’s being used for several sessions morning, afternoon and evening of those days, so that’s really valuable as a resource. Everyone knows that we are a voluntary organisation. I think what people don’t realise is just the shear number of volunteers that are involved. And I must admit I got a shocked myself when I counted up who were the individuals for the last year, and there were 80 different individuals who had given their time, maybe only once for a couple of hours, but had given their time to this project, to an event or to a work day. And that was just our own volunteers, that didn’t include cooperate work days. That was just people that are known to us, and 20 of those 80 were under 18’s. And that’s really hearting to know that the young people really embrace what’s been done here and they can make a fantastic contribution.

End transcript: Lisa, Co-convenor, Polbeth and West Calder Community Garden. All rights reserved.

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Lisa, Co-convenor, Polbeth and West Calder Community Garden. All rights reserved.

You might also want to speak to volunteers, staff and service users about their experience. As well as finding out about the impact on or of volunteers, it is also an opportunity to find out what is going well or what could be done differently. You could do this via a survey or by getting people together for a focus group.

James talks about triangulating data from volunteers, staff and young people to gain a complete picture of the difference made by volunteers.

Download this video clip.Video player: James, Volunteering Manager, LGBT Youth Scotland. All rights reserved.

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Transcript: James, Volunteering Manager, LGBT Youth Scotland. All rights reserved.

James

So in terms of how we measure the difference that volunteers make, I think really all of our works as an organisation is evaluated, and volunteers typically play a part in more or less everything that we do. When it comes to working with young people and the volunteers that work with young people, we try and kind of triangulate information about volunteers, so we want to hear about volunteers themselves and about what’s the difference volunteering is making for you, how are you are enjoying it, how things are going for you. We’ll also talk to staff, we’ll hear from youth worker and managers about how people are getting on, how they are progressing as a volunteer. And really importantly what we also do, we try and listen to young people, cause young people will tells us. They are not shy about telling us about their favourite volunteer or a volunteer who really helped them out in a difficult time they were having. So it’s great to capture that, can be really powerful to feed that back to the volunteer, that such and such a young person has told us this, so well done.

End transcript: James, Volunteering Manager, LGBT Youth Scotland. All rights reserved.

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James, Volunteering Manager, LGBT Youth Scotland. All rights reserved.