This award recognises an organisation who has gone above and beyond to support their volunteers in pursuing a career in health and care. The winner will need to demonstrate how their organisation provides a clear pathway with a wide range of support for volunteers to develop their careers.

We are looking for examples of programmes that have integrated Volunteer to Career into their strategy, supporting volunteers to overcome career challenges and fulfil their ambition. Examples could include organisations that expose volunteers to different environments and experiences to help them realise their career goals in healthcare, or how organisations use creative ways to support volunteers into work.

This award celebrates an individual who has gone above and beyond expectations in their volunteering role during the year, and made a noticeable impact on the experience of staff, patients and their local community.

We are looking for volunteers that have gone above and beyond to improve the lives of the people they help. This person could have made a huge difference to the lives of the people they help, whether it was 1 person or 100 different people. Judges will look at evidence that shows whether this volunteer has made a positive impact on staff, patients and other volunteers and if this person has inspired others with their actions.

This award goes to a supportive member of health and care staff (outside of volunteer management) who has championed and embraced volunteers, and gone the extra mile to recognise the positive impact volunteers can make. This could be a Chief Executive, Director, Head of Department or policy maker nurse, health visitor, physio, healthcare assistant, or any colleague who has made a special effort to welcome and support volunteers.

This staff member has placed volunteering as an integral part of their organisation's work. They are continually championing the role of volunteers and the positive impact they have for staff, patients and other volunteers. Nominations could include senior directors who recognise and promote the value of volunteering at a national level.

This award recognises the commitment and dedication of an outstanding staff member who manages volunteers, or has a core responsibility for managing or coordinating volunteering in the health and care sector.

We want to see examples of leaders who have improved the way volunteers support staff, patients, and the volunteers themselves using innovation and bringing about transformation. This award is open to people who coordinate and/or manage volunteers within the NHS and in voluntary and community organisations. The nominee does not have to have the job title of volunteer manager, as long as they manage volunteers as part of their job.

This award celebrates programmes that actively try to recruit volunteers that reflect the diverse communities in which they operate. It also celebrates programmes and projects that aim to reduce healthcare inequalities in the local communities in which they operate.

We are looking for examples that encourage the recruitment of diverse volunteers that reflect the local community. Successful nominees recognise the benefit of ED&I in their volunteer programmes. Nominations should include, evidenced approaches to reducing healthcare inequalities in the region/community, inclusive projects or schemes that promote racial, social and economic diversity and equality within their volunteering strategy – for example, by drawing on the talents of people from a wide range of ethnicities, mental and physical abilities, economic and social backgrounds, refugees, the homeless, carers.

This award celebrates the partnership that allows volunteers to operate across the community to support integrated care systems' healthcare priorities, or partnerships operating between the NHS, voluntary & community sector, and local government, that makes a significant impact on the local community.

We're looking for examples of regional partnerships that showed an impactful outcome of their programme. Examples could include how different programmes and organisations share best practice and even volunteers across regions to achieve healthcare targets.

This award celebrates projects involving volunteers and / or the voluntary sector that demonstrate a commitment to gathering evidence of insights and impact. They have produced robust evidence of the impact that has been made and have used insights to make continuous improvements to their volunteering initiative. They have made a proven impact on people and organisations within health and care which can reinforce the case for scaling up the project into more areas.

We are looking for examples of projects where they have collected data and produced an evidence report, that proves that the project has made a quantified difference to stakeholders such as volunteers, patients / service users / people, NHS staff, and organisations within health and care. We are also interested to see examples of services using the evidence gathered to make improvements and developments to their volunteering service. We are most interested in projects where this evidence is proven at a 'head turning' scale that would impress health leaders or has the ambition or potential to be scaled up to make such an impact.