Improve your volunteering service and prove its impact within health & care

Helpforce partners with health and care organisations across the UK to accelerate the growth and impact of volunteering. They are an independent not-for-profit innovator, focused on co-creation of volunteering projects with health and care organisations.

For many of the clients we have supported to date, the Insight & Impact (I&I) service was offered without a charge to them, as we covered the cost using funding provided by our donors which was provided for this purpose. For any new projects moving forward we will be able to offer some of this service free of charge, where we have the funding and resources available, and where the project fits our broader ambitions. We review each case by its merit. We advise that you start your project with us and agree to our terms of service. We will then review your project and decide if we are able to support you without a cost to you. However, in some instances (for example, where we are asked to undertake evaluation of a large project that will take up significant time and resource), there may be a cost to use our services. In this instance, we will discuss cost implications with you before we proceed further than Stage 2 (design).

Our I&I service supports volunteering-based initiatives (including volunteer roles, volunteering projects, or VCSE services) that contribute to improvements in health-related outcomes. This includes initiatives that:

• Provide direct benefits to patient/service user health.

• Help the staff and organisations that work with patients and service users.

• Assist with continuous improvement of health and care services.

If you are looking to undertake an evaluation of an initiative that you believe fits this description, then it is possible that we will be able to help. If you are unsure, please contact us at insight@helpforce.community to discuss.

It only takes a few minutes to sign up and get started, but the time it takes to undertake an evaluation varies depending on the outcomes you are exploring, and the level of confidence required around the evidence gathered. Based on experience, some evaluation projects take a few months and others take over a year to collect sufficient data. If we are able to take your project forwards, our team will work with you to ensure that your evaluation timeframe and approach are proportionate to your needs and the expectations of key audiences.

Once the I&I team has agreed to assist you with your evaluation project, we will look to work with you through to completion in accordance with our terms and conditions. Before embarking on an evaluation, we will encourage you to consider the ‘readiness’ of your initiative and will work with you to understand what needs to be done to move into the data collection and evaluation phases.

Our I&I team work between 9am and 5pm Monday to Friday and will be available during this time to support you. All support is initially requested via our I&I website. Our team will acknowledge your request and be in touch via email as needed. We aim to respond to you as soon as possible, however, we do ask for flexibility during busy periods.

Who you inform will be dependent upon your service and any organisational procedures and protocols that may be in place. We will work alongside you to determine the key audiences of your evaluation project, which will likely include your senior management, operational staff teams and the volunteers themselves. We recommend that you engage all of these individuals as it is likely that their insights will be sought as part of the evaluation. Early communication with volunteers in particular is highly recommended as they will be pivotal in collecting data to support the evaluation process.

The data we collect will be dependent upon the outcomes we are attempting to measure. Our I&I service has been designed to provide users with a simple solution for collecting only the data that can prove the value of your volunteering initiative. The I&I team will be able to access all data you collect to enable us to deliver the results you need, however, we will only collect data required for the evaluation and it will be used for evaluation purposes and to support our Back to Health campaign only.

Helpforce collects, processes and stores all data in compliance with UK GDPR regulations and will not collect or hold sensitive or personal information as standard. Where individual insights and feedback are captured as part of an evaluation it will be processed in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Should your evaluation require the collection of personal identifiable information, we will discuss this with you and ensure any data sharing agreements and arrangements are in place before collecting or requesting this data.

We understand that you have a workload outside of the I&I evaluation project and will work with you in a flexible way to achieve your evaluation goals. Delays with evaluation are not uncommon, and we will work with our clients to accommodate any delays as much as possible within our current workload. However, if a project is put on hold, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to support the project again in future.