One Year On: Battersea Volunteers

Battersea Volunteers is a new project we set up last year, as part of the Battersea Alliance. It aims to encourage more local residents to volunteer with local community organisations in Battersea and develop best practices in volunteering. Diana Hardman is our Volunteer Development Officer. Over the last year she’s concentrated on developing four areas of work:

1. Building local knowledge and contacts with people
2. Developing volunteer training and resources
3. Establishing a volunteer brokerage service
4. Raising profile about volunteering in Battersea

What follows is more detail of Diana’s work over the last year:

1. Building local knowledge and contacts with people  

• Built a contact list of 95 local organisations in Battersea.
  • We reached 79 through email; and met and got to know 48 local organisations in Battersea.
• Created a Baseline Survey: to gain a picture of what support organisations need.
  • We had a good response to the survey and the questionnaire produced rich data.
  • Published a research report: A needs assessment of community organisations working with volunteers in Battersea Research Report 1.
  • It’s publically available on the Alliance website and we disseminated the information, culminating in a launch event on 24^th March 2021.

2. Volunteer training and resources 

• Included a ‘Battersea Volunteers’ section on the Alliance website.
• Written and shared information on best practices in volunteer management, with examples and templates of policies and procedures. There are links of useful resources and opportunities for organisations to go through a ‘Volunteer Management Health Check’ themselves for further information on best practice.
• Created training modules around various aspects of volunteering e.g. recruitment, volunteer management
• Delivered bite-size training for groups, on subjects including: managing difficult situations with volunteers, supervision, writing role descriptions and where to advertise.
• Established a Volunteer Managers Network, which meets quarterly. We’ve run 3 online network meetings so far. It’s a great way of coming together and sharing information, experiences and collaboration, networking and learning about volunteering.  As well as, peer support, problem solving, showcasing good practice  and running bite-size training around common themes.

3. Volunteer Brokerage

• Worked with Wandsworth Care Alliance to research and create a new Volunteer Brokerage Platform for the Borough of Wandsworth. We manage the Battersea section.
• Advertised the ‘Battersea Volunteers’ Brokerage Service on local websites, social and media and printed flyers/leaflets.
• Held one-to-one meetings with local residents to support them into volunteering.

4. Raising the profile of volunteering in Battersea

• Created a ‘Battersea Volunteers’ logo to increase brand awareness about the project
• Written blogs and news items around the project. These have been picked up and promoted by other local groups including KLS News; SWSJ charity (local funder) have posted a link for the service on their website.
• Advertise ‘Battersea Volunteers’ service on local online noticeboards e.g. Nappy Valley, Next Door. We’ve distributed flyers to the Council for dissemination to Battersea neighborhoods.
• Write and circulate a quarterly newsletter about Battersea Volunteers. It goes out to 42 contacts, and is shared on social media.
• Established a social media presence. Set up a Twitter account @BatterseaVolun1 and regularly tweet about volunteering, news, updates, as well as highlight local volunteering opportunities.  We have 125 followers.
• Celebrated national Volunteers Week 2021 (June’21). We collected and shared volunteer’s stories and video interviewed organisations about their work with volunteers. 12 case studies were shared on social media to promote ‘Battersea Volunteers’ and the power of volunteering during Volunteers Week. View these on the Alliance website and Battersea Volunteers YouTube
• Organised a ‘Celebration of Community Volunteering’ event on 10^thSeptember 2021. We held a Volunteer Fair with 14 local organisations; and Award Ceremony – the Mayor of Wandsworth presented 21 volunteer award certificates. We secured good coverage on social media.

“Thanks for session this morning Diana, I got a lot from it. The Celebration of Community Volunteering had an excellent turn out of the stalls and the event went smoothly. It was great to meet everyone in person and people really enjoyed this. The volunteer brokerage site is working well and organisations are signing up to it.” 

Jo Collis, Little Village charity

To volunteer in Battersea contact

Diana Hardman

Volunteering Development Officer for Battersea

07956 617 084 (Mobile) &  020 7223 2845 (Office)

[email protected]