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Investing in Volunteers takes pride of place

The Investing in Volunteers Award has taken its place as the latest addition to the Big Life trophy cabinet.

The bid to get the award renewed for the third time on the trot, began in 2019 and marks over fifteen years of award success in supporting volunteers.

The award, the industry standard for volunteer involvement, is a rigorous independent assessment of six key quality standards for volunteer recognition and support.

In his final report before the award was granted, our assessor William Carr pointed to a range of strengths

“BLG’s Volunteer Co-ordinators and Supervisors are strongly motivational which has the knock-on effect of motivating volunteers.

“BLG’s Volunteers Portal ensures that volunteers are kept well informed.

“BLG is very receptive to offering employment and career opportunities to its volunteers. Similarly many former service users have been encouraged to become volunteers with some eventually moving into employed roles.

“Along with the recently launched Trauma Informed Approach it is commendable that volunteers will be able to avail themselves of the “Health and Wellbeing Pathway” and “My Life Plan”.

The latest award also marks a key development in volunteer support. Karen Welsh, who took us through the awards process handed over the reins to Charmaine Gregory in her role as Volunteer and Engagement Manager for the group.

Charmaine said:

“It’s fantastic to see Big Life awarded IiV for the 15th year in a row. This demonstrates to me that I have joined an organisation that really values its volunteers and provides them with such a positive experience.

“Looking at the coming year I’m excited by the prospect of continuing to support the volunteer leads, developing volunteer management training, working with services to develop new volunteering roles, and working on coproduction with people with lived experience.”