
We’ve got so many Volunteering Updates, we thought we’d pop them in our blog!
Our Volunteer Co-Ordinator, Fern, has recently finalised the brand new 3-year Volunteer Strategy. The draft has now been approved by our Board and will be finalised after a few small tweaks. Our new strategic aims focus on volunteer requirements, communication, training and support and diversity. We are excited about the implementation of the new strategy and we are confident that it will lead to improvements for volunteers, young people, staff, and the overall consistency of the Venture Scotland community. Keep your eyes peeled as it will be landing in your inbox by the end of the month!
We’ve also been working on updating our Volunteer Handbook. Board member Jennifer, Ambassador Bryan and Venture Volunteer Kat recently helped Fern go through the outdated version and decide what was relevant, useful, and important to keep and what needed to be updated – there is so much super information that we cannot wait to be able to hand it out again to volunteers!
You may have seen in our last newsletter that we have recently invested in a new volunteer management software called Assemble. We expect this will dramatically improve what we can offer volunteers, how we organise, schedule and plan our volunteer opportunities and how we store and manage information. There will even be a phone app which will allow volunteers to book volunteering slots, get automatic reminders and so much more! Our Volunteer Co-Ordinator, Fern, has been attending weekly training sessions to get the software up and running and we hope to have this operational by early summer!
We’ve also been revisiting our Ambassador programme. Our Ambassador programme was launched during 2020 as a pilot project to allow our graduate Young People to gain new skills and contribute to VS. The past two years has been a learning process and we’re currently redesigning the pathway to becoming a VS Ambassador. Fern and our CEO, David, have been having discussions with staff, our current Ambassadors and our Young People to make sure the process is fair and inclusive and reflects our Young People’s input.
Stay tuned for more updates!