Volunteer Recruitment Project Evaluation

2.2 To design and produce new high-quality recruiting publications for different target volunteer groups and to make contact with relevant agencies, companies and organisations: 4

2.3 To develop and to test a variety of established and new, innovative methods of volunteer recruitment: 4

2.4 To increase the number of high calibre volunteers who are recruited, trained, screened and matched with families, so that in turn more families and children can be supported: 4

2.5 To encourage growth and development in the volunteers and encourage them to use the Home Link pathway to take up training and learning opportunities: 5

2.6 To develop, adapt and extend the role of the VRO: 5

3. Findings 5

3.1 Effectiveness of employing a VRO 5

3.2 Effectiveness of each volunteer recruitment method 6

3.3 High Calibre Volunteer Befriender Profile 7

3.4 Benefits for Families 8

3.5 Benefits for Volunteer Befrienders 9

3.6 Developing and adapting the VRO Role 10

4. Conclusions 11

Appendix 1: Report on Volunteering 13

1. Introduction

Home Link is a voluntary service dedicated to offering quality support to families with at least one child under the age of five. Many of the families who use the Home Link service are among the most disadvantaged and socially excluded and will rarely use any other local services or activities. Most of the Home Link families have a wide range of complex problems and Home Link offers them a package of support including: careful assessment of their needs; matching them with a trained and supervised befriender; advocating on their behalf and encouraging them to access other appropriate sources of support. Over the last 19 years, Home Link has supported over 1000 families in Edinburgh and Midlothian.

The purpose of the current Home Link Project was to test the effectiveness of creating a discrete post and employing a part-time Volunteer Recruitment Officer (VRO). Up to July 2003 local volunteer recruitment was part of the job remit of the part-time project workers and city-wide recruitment fell to the Manager and Administrator, all of whom are part-time workers. Following a consultation/capacity building exercise, Home Link decided that effective volunteer recruitment requires a temperament, aptitude and skills that belong to a discreet post. They also agreed that employing someone specifically for this job would mean that project workers time could be more effectively used, whilst at the same time increasing the number of much needed volunteers.

1.1 Project Objectives

To evaluate the effectiveness of employing a VRO, the project had the following main objectives

(1) To research the volunteer market and draw up a recruitment strategy,

(2) To design and produce new high-quality recruiting publications for different target volunteer groups and to make contact with relevant agencies, companies and organisations,

(3) To develop and to test a variety of established and new innovative methods of volunteer recruitment,

(4) To increase the number of high calibre volunteers who are recruited, trained, screened and matched with families, so that in turn more families and children can be supported,

(5) To set up effective ways of evaluating the calibre of volunteers recruited in conjunction with the other Home Link staff,

(7) To encourage growth and development in the volunteer befrienders and encourage them to use the Home Link pathway to take up training and learning opportunities,

(8) To develop, adapt and extend the role of the VRO.

2. Methods and Procedure

The Home Link Volunteer Recruitment Project aimed to evaluate the overall effectiveness of employing a Volunteer Recruitment Officer (VRO) who has a dedicated remit for volunteer recruitment. Qualitative methods were used to collect information on measures of effectiveness and to evaluate each of the Project Objectives in the following way:

2.1 To research the volunteer market and draw up a recruitment strategy:

This was successfully carried out at the beginning of the Project. The VRO produced a report of the recruitment strategy which is attached in Appendix 1 No further action was required.

2.2 To design and produce new high-quality recruiting publications for different target volunteer groups and to make contact with relevant agencies, companies and organisations:

In the first year of the post the VRO worked extensively to design, produce and distribute different types of volunteer recruitment publications and to build up collaborative working relationships with agencies, organisations and individuals who could support the VRO in the recruitment process. The VRO collected information describing each recruitment method and the number of volunteer befrienders recruited as a direct result of each method. Findings are presented in the Results section below. In the second year of the Project, when the initial ground work had been done, the VRO was able to develop and adapt her role with the support of Home Link. This was then included as an objective and evaluated in its own right (see point 2.6 below).

2.3 To develop and to test a variety of established and new, innovative methods of volunteer recruitment:

The VRO has developed and implemented a range of volunteer recruitment methods over the 2 years of the Project. A procedure was developed to record the recruitment channel taken by new volunteer befrienders recruited during the period of the Project. The resulting figures are presented in the Results section below and the effectiveness of each method is discussed.

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