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    Assessing The Impact of Volunteering: A Toolkit For Practitioners

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    Mogahed Osman
    The document introduces a toolkit for assessing the impact of volunteering programs which provides a framework for evaluating impacts on volunteers, organizations, service users, and communities across economic, physical, human, social, and cultural capital. It describes the various tools in the toolkit including questionnaires, focus groups, and audit forms and gives an example of how a children's hospice in Scotland used the tools to identify impacts and recommendations to improve their volunteering program.

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    Assessing The Impact of Volunteering: A Toolkit For Practitioners

    Uploaded by

    Mogahed Osman
    54 views15 pages
    The document introduces a toolkit for assessing the impact of volunteering programs which provides a framework for evaluating impacts on volunteers, organizations, service users, and communities across economic, physical, human, social, and cultural capital. It describes the various tools in the toolkit including questionnaires, focus groups, and audit forms and gives an example of how a children's hospice in Scotland used the tools to identify impacts and recommendations to improve their volunteering program.

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    The document introduces a toolkit for assessing the impact of volunteering programs which provides a framework for evaluating impacts on volunteers, organizations, service users, and communities across economic, physical, human, social, and cultural capital. It describes the various tools in the toolkit including questionnaires, focus groups, and audit forms and gives an example of how a children's hospice in Scotland used the tools to identify impacts and recommendations to improve their volunteering program.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    54 views15 pages

    Assessing The Impact of Volunteering: A Toolkit For Practitioners

    Uploaded by

    Mogahed Osman
    The document introduces a toolkit for assessing the impact of volunteering programs which provides a framework for evaluating impacts on volunteers, organizations, service users, and communities across economic, physical, human, social, and cultural capital. It describes the various tools in the toolkit including questionnaires, focus groups, and audit forms and gives an example of how a children's hospice in Scotland used the tools to identify impacts and recommendations to improve their volunteering program.

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    Assessing the Impact of

    Volunteering: A toolkit for


    practitioners
    Joanna Stuart, Institute for Volunteering Research

    An initiative of in association with


    Why assess impacts and why a toolkit?

    • Increasing pressure for organisations to monitor, measure


    and demonstrate the impact and benefits of volunteering
    programmes
    • Demand from funders – increasingly want to know
    what difference their funding makes
    • Demand from organisations – want to know what
    works and what could work better
    • Demand from volunteers – ‘no one wants to give their
    time to something that has no impact’
    The Volunteering Impact Assessment toolkit

    • Developed by IVR to help organisations


    assess the impact of volunteering
    • Provides a useful framework for
    assessing a broad range of impacts
    • Includes a series of adaptable research
    tools
    • Provides guidelines for data collection
    and analysis
    • Used by a number of organisations in
    the UK and overseas
    What do we mean by impacts?

    “All the changes resulting from a project,


    activity or organisation. Includes intended
    and unintended changes, positive and
    negative, long and short term changes”

    Source: Wainwright, S. Measuring Impact: A guide to resources, NCVO


    The toolkit framework: Who benefits?

    • A whole range of stakeholders – exactly who will be


    different for each organisation, but can be broadly
    grouped into:

    - Volunteers

    - Organisations

    - Service users/beneficiaries

    - Wider community
    The toolkit framework: How do they benefit?

    • Endless list of impacts – need to be categorised:


    - Economic capital

    - Physical capital

    - Human capital

    - Social capital

    - Cultural capital
    What are the impacts?
    • Increased earning power
    Economic capital • Financial costs through being out of pocket
    The economic benefits and costs of volunteering

    • Training courses
    Physical capital • Social events
    Tangible benefits for volunteers

    • Confidence and self esteem


    Human capital • Vocational skills
    Personal development and skills gained

    • Increased contacts and networks


    Social capital • Increased involvement in local activities
    Social relationships, networks and trusts developed

    • Increased sense of community


    Cultural capital • Increased understanding of other cultures
    Development of cultural identity and understanding
    The tools

    • Core and supplementary questionnaires for each


    stakeholder group with questions for the five types of
    capital
    The tools

    • Core and supplementary questionnaires for each


    stakeholder group with questions for the five types of
    capital
    The tools

    • Core and supplementary questionnaires for each


    stakeholder group with questions for the five types
    of capital
    • Focus group topic guides
    • Volunteer manager audit form
    • Volunteer diary
    How have organisations used the results?

    • To inform the development of volunteering


    programmes
    • To help develop volunteering strategies
    • To provide evidence of impact to existing funders
    • To attract funding
    • To raise the profile of the volunteering programme
    internally and externally
    • To raise the profile of the organisation
    • To recruit volunteers
    What are the challenges and issues?

    • Can be time consuming - need to take a piecemeal


    approach and don’t try and do it all at the same time
    • Need to integrate impact assessment into
    volunteering programmes – not just an adhoc add on
    exercise but an ongoing process
    • Need to take on board negative findings as well as
    the positives
    • Findings draw heavily on people’s perceptions
    • There are other sector specific tools which might be
    useful, particularly for assessing the impacts on
    service users and beneficiaries
    Children’s Hospice Association Scotland

    • Methods: Volunteers trained to undertake assessment on


    staff, volunteers, beneficiaries
    • Findings:
    - Volunteers: positive experience:
    • 84% said they had built friendships and networks through volunteering
    • But, 18% felt their skills weren’t being utilised
    - Staff: valued the role of volunteers:
    • 83% felt volunteers helped create open & diverse culture
    • But, 18% felt they were over reliant on volunteers, and some did not
    recognise board members as volunteers
    Children’s Hospice Association Scotland
    - Families: significant impact of volunteers on families
    • 73% said volunteers led to new friendships & social networks
    • But, some were concerned about how volunteers were vetted and
    whether they should be undertaking care roles
    • Using the findings:
    - A number of recommendations arose from the research
    which are being built into a new strategy:
    • Review how volunteer skills are utilised to full effect
    • Raise awareness within the organisation of the role and volunteer status
    of the board
    • Explore the possibility of extending volunteer roles to home care support
    • Develop a leaflet for families about volunteers, their role, and how they
    are recruited
    Further information

    Further information about the impact assessment toolkit is


    available from:
    http://www.ivr.org.uk/booksandlibrary/Impact+Assess
    ment+Toolkit.htm

    Specific tools are also available for sports volunteering and health
    volunteering

    Joanna Stuart
    Institute for Volunteering Research
    Joanna.stuart@volunteeringengland.org

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