PART 1

Developing your service

If you’re considering a new project, your first step should be planning work to lay the foundations of an effective service. Think through the people and systems you’ll need to run the service you have in mind.

1. Get buy-in. Start by getting the right people involved. Who needs to back the project in your organisation? Support from senior stakeholders is usually important. Who needs to be involved in developing, running, promoting and evaluating the service, how and when?
2. Be flexible with project planning. Put together a project plan, but take a flexible approach. Allow time and space to reflect on learning gathered in the early stages, and to make changes based on this – test, review and revise. Make sure your plan includes the scale and scope of the new service, and budget and resources needed.
3. Understand the context. It’s important to understand why this service is being set up and how it supports your organisation’s strategic and operational priorities. This will help you set out a realistic project plan and timeline.
4. Establish a steering group. Try to set up an active group made up of key stakeholders to oversee the development of your project, generate ideas, overcome barriers and make decisions. Members could include volunteer managers, volunteers, clinical staff and executive level roles, to make sure you get a full and balanced view about how your service should develop and improve.

PART 2

Setting up systems and infrastructure

The next step in setting up your new volunteering service is to consider the resources you need, and the processes you need to put in place to make it work efficiently.

1. Think about equipment and resources. Will your service need a space to operate from? Will you need IT equipment like laptops? Will staff and volunteers need training on how to use equipment?
2. Consider your referral process carefully. How will people be referred to your service? However it works, simplifying your approach will help you overcome barriers to people using systems and processes. For example, a simple, quick phone call to make a referral will often be the most effective process, instead of asking clinical staff to fill in a form. The result will be more referrals.
3. Research volunteer management systems. A volunteer management system might be useful. This will hold all the information about your volunteers in one place, including rotas, contact information and data about how the service is performing. Research the platforms available to find a product that meets your service’s needs and will comply with your organisation’s IT policy. Once you have a system in place, you’ll need to allow time for staff training and data inputting.

PART 3

Operating your service

Understanding the budget, people, systems and processes you need to manage your service once it’s live is essential.

1. Consider your budget. Your primary costs will be salaries for the key people involved in the project. Other costs could include volunteer recruitment, training, catering and equipment.
2. Prioritise staff engagement. It’s important to commit time to engaging with staff to discuss your service, share its impact and encourage staff to refer to it.
3. Have a dedicated project role to lead. Services tend to work best with a dedicated project manager, who can promote the service, support volunteers, act as a central point for continuous improvement, and manage referrals.
4. Start small. Embedding your volunteer service in one department, ward or area to begin with will let you test your processes and address any teething problems before expanding to other areas. Staff involved in the early stages of the service can become clinical champions and promote the benefits of volunteer support to their colleagues in other departments.
5. Market the service. Internal and external communications and marketing resources will keep the service prominent in staff’s minds and make it visible to family, friends and patients.
6. Get volunteer uniforms. Uniforms and badges make volunteers easy to recognise. They also give staff, families and patients confidence in volunteers, and help them feel secure.
7. Ask yourself key questions. How will you balance demand for the service with recruitment, training and scheduling of new volunteers? How will you build demand for your service to ensure that it’s sustainable? Who are your main sponsors in your organisation and how can they help you?

PART 4

Volunteer management

Managing and supporting volunteers effectively is key to the success of your service. Handling volunteers well will mean they continue to give their time, and the service will have a more experienced, skilled and confident volunteering team.

It’s important to think about every stage of a volunteer’s journey, from their decision to volunteer through to training, induction, ongoing support and day to day engagement.

1. Create a supportive environment and promote volunteers’ wellbeing. This is essential to ensure the quality of your service. Volunteers should be invited to share their challenges and successes and actively feed into how the service operates and improves.
2. Supervise your volunteers. It’s important to offer volunteers regular formal support (often referred to as supervision), where they can meet with a trained member of staff to offload and discuss the emotional impact of their volunteering, as well as any concerns and learnings.
3. Provide effective training. Consider what training volunteers need to provide a great service, and how you can provide it.
4. Be flexible. Allowing volunteers flexibility with the hours they commit will help with recruitment and support existing volunteers who need to fit volunteering around their work and home life.
5. Recruit from your current base of volunteers. This is a good place to start as they’re already familiar with and committed to your organisation.
6. Ask volunteers to record their levels of satisfaction. At the end of a shift, ask volunteers to fill out an activity sheet detailing what they’ve done and how it made them feel. You can use this to identify issues you need to address.

PART 5

Measuring impact

It’s important to collate data and feedback, and use it to refine and improve your service.

1. Develop a theory of change. This is an essential tool to outline your service’s intended impact and to help decide what intermediate outcomes and ultimate goals to measure. You should create this right at the beginning, alongside identifying your service principles and the strategic and operational objectives your service is looking to address.

To understand the data you want to capture you also need to understand your key strategic and operational priorities. It’s important to identify the measures that will best demonstrate the impact and benefits of the service on these priorities.

2. Capture volunteer activity and feedback. Ask volunteers to fill in simple activity sheets so you can determine how many patients they supported and what activities they engaged in. The sheets will also help you collate feedback from staff, patients, families, friends and the volunteers themselves, and to gauge volunteer satisfaction after each session.

3. Capture key figures. Record your:

• Number of volunteers
• Number of volunteer hours
• Number of patients supported
• Number of family members/carers supported
• Frequency of volunteer visits

4. Ask key evaluation questions for the project. These could include:

• Does the service support staff in delivering good care to patients?
• Does volunteer support contribute to staff wellbeing?
• Do staff feel satisfied with the support provided by volunteers?
• Do volunteers feel that volunteering has had an impact on their wellbeing?

5. Make sure your data is robust. It’s vital that the data you collect is robust and valid. You should test systems and processes for robustness, and provide effective training for those involved in collating data.