As an accredited Volunteer centre that was successfully awarded the Investing in Volunteers (IIV) accreditation as a volunteer involving organisation, we stepped outside of our usual working practice to support the recruitment of volunteers as a combined response with both Leicestershire County Council and Leicester City Council. We worked in partnership with De Montfort University and the District and Borough Councils to enhance the volunteering offer available. Over 2,400 people signed up to be part of the bank of volunteers and VAL placed 60% of those with local VCSE organisations to aid local communities.
All volunteers who registered with us were offered at least one volunteering opportunity and in many cases more than one (exact number 1.7 opportunities per person registered with us). There were other routes to volunteering including the GoodSam App and although we do not know their conversion rate we expect to compare more than favourably (prior to the pandemic national conversion rates for volunteering hovered around 14%). We were also able to respond significantly quicker and were open for registration a handful of days after the national lockdown was announced.
If we compare the extended lockdown period to a similar period in 2019 – 2020 the combined numbers of visits and visitors to our volunteering website increased by 32%. The number of people who visited the VAL Website (where people registered to volunteer) doubled. We also saw a small increase in the number of likes and followers across social media and a similar increase in subscribers to our newsletter.
Vaccination project
We continued our support to the statutory sector by working closely with Clinical Commissioning Group to include the mobilisation of volunteers to support test centres, following this work we were able to secure additional funds to support the registration and mobilisation of volunteers in support of the roll out of vaccination sites.
Get support from VAL
If your organisation has been affected by the pandemic and you need support with volunteers, finding funding or reopening safely, get in touch with VAL’s Voluntary Sector Support team.