Last week, the Royal Voluntary Service (RVS) launched GoVo, a new national volunteering platform aimed at growing volunteering across the UK, with a large-scale media campaign. As the organisation behind Volunteer Bucks, the county’s dedicated volunteering platform, we know just how transformative volunteering can be — not only for local people, but for the communities they serve. We welcome the national spotlight on volunteering and fully support the ambition to increase participation and awareness, inspiring people to find the ‘role of a lifetime’. As the volunteer centre for Buckinghamshire, we connect local people with local organisations for local causes. We work with charities, community groups and partners alike to shout about the power of volunteering for the benefit of Buckinghamshire and our communities. Our ambition for Volunteer Bucks is to make volunteering easier, more inclusive, and more rewarding for individuals and organisations across the county. With our deep understanding of Buckinghamshire’s local needs, causes, and communities, we know where volunteering opportunities exist and who’s delivering them. We are actively engaging with RVS and NAVCA to explore how Volunteer Bucks can connect with GoVo for the benefit of our local organisations and volunteers. Our goal is to ensure you benefit from our local expertise, experience and connection to Buckinghamshire people and organisations with the potential to reach a broader national audience. Volunteering starts at the heart of communities, and we remain committed to ensuring it stays vibrant, accessible to all in Buckinghamshire. On the launch of GoVo, Kate Walker, CEO at Community Impact Bucks, said: “We welcome any initiative that shines a spotlight on volunteering nationally—after all, the more people giving their time, the better. We also know how invaluable Volunteer Bucks has become to Buckinghamshire charities, groups and people, as a trusted local platform and service providing expert support and guidance with everything that is involved in managing and finding volunteers. Volunteering is a top priority for us, and we’re proud to be pioneering new and innovative ways of reimagining volunteering for the future here in Buckinghamshire. I’d encourage Buckinghamshire charities, people and organisations to use the spotlight of the national campaign to share your own volunteering stories, promote volunteering roles and help us inspire local people to support local causes. ” Volunteer Bucks remains your go-to hub for local volunteer opportunities. If you’d like to get involved in supporting volunteering in Bucks, share your stories, or need help with local expertise and connections, get in touch with our Volunteer Bucks team at https://www.volunteerbucks.org.uk/ as part of www.communityimpactbucks.org.uk.

Your organisation’s listings on Volunteer Bucks are an excellent way of advertising your roles to potential volunteers. Here are some hints and tips to help get the best from our platform. First impressions count The image that you choose is important. Depending on the search criteria chosen by a potential volunteer, they may see a screen full of images relating to a whole host of opportunities listed by a variety of organisations. Volunteers are likely to click on a well-centred, clear image before investigating a blurry or truncated picture or an image that doesn’t seem to link to the role being listed or the purpose of the organisation. You can find advice on choosing and sizing your images in our blog on Using images when posting Volunteer Opportunities . Keep your listings up to date Once a volunteer contacts you to sign up for or find out more about a role, the system automatically logs this as “pending”. You can see the status of all your active roles by going into your organisation’s profile page. If there is a small number next to the “Opportunities” in the menu on the left-hand side, this means that there is something for you to do: In this example, there are 3 roles where the system has one or more “pending” applications. These may relate to applications where you are still in discussion with the potential volunteer, but often applications that are “pending” are simply those where the outcome of the application has not been recorded. Once you click on “Opportunities”, a list of all your organisation’s active listings appears. Next to each are small numbers which indicate how many volunteers have been accepted and how many applications are pending. Eg: Clicking on those numbers takes you to the details of all applications there have been for that role. From that screen you can access all messages to and from the volunteer, and message the volunteer and you can also change the status of the application. For example, means that the application is logged as “pending”. Clicking on that yellow dot allows you to change this the status to “accepted”, “declined” or “on reserve list”. Archive filled or expired roles If you have enough volunteers for the role you have listed, you can mark it as filled. Once you have filled a volunteer role or no longer need volunteers for that role, do archive the listing. This hides the listing from public view, but keeps it in a separate folder so you can reactivate it or copy it as a template for another role at a later date. Archiving helps to keep your organisation’s profile on Volunteer Bucks clearly focussed on your current roles that you would like volunteers to come forward for. You can find the mark a role as filled or archive it using the toolbar under the image on your role listing page: These steps can save you time in having to deal with messages from potential volunteers interested in roles that are no longer available. No response to your listing? If after two weeks or so you’ve had no interest in the role(s) you have listed, it is worth refreshing the listing. Things you might think about are: A new image Changing the role title to something more descriptive Changing the wording in the Summary part of your listing – this appears under the image on the volunteer’s search results page If you have a question or need help, you can get in touch by emailing [email protected]

Celebrating the first year of Volunteer Bucks