At health in mind we used the Measuring the Impact of Volunteering Toolkit for volunteers to help us understand better the impact volunteering has on staff, volunteers and service users. Health in mind is a charity. We work with people who experience mental health difficulties by providing services, and by working in partnership with others. Volunteers play a vital role in our work. They work along side staff to deliver services and help manage our organization.
This work was part of a Social Economy Scotland (SES) pilot to test the usefulness of the Toolkit. SES is a Development Partnership funded by the European Community’s EQUAL initiative. The pilot was lead by Volunteer Development Scotland (VDS).
The issues addressed
We needed to demonstrate the impact of volunteering. Funders wanted to know what was happening as a result of their funding. We also wanted to encourage other people to volunteer. From our experience of supporting volunteers we knew that volunteering provided opportunities for increased confidence and self esteem, developing new skills, and working towards goals and we were keen to evidence this. We also wanted to understand how well we were doing in supporting our volunteers, what worked well and how we could improve.
What we did
We went on a training course which was provided by VDS. After which we followed the guidance in the toolkit and started by working with our volunteer managers to come up with a matrix for the organization. This matrix took the form of a table which mapped the relationship between the different stakeholders including volunteers, staff, service users & the wider community. The table allowed us to see how our stakeholders can be affected by volunteering by measuring 5 types of capital:
• Physical capital: this measured outputs such as the number of trees planted by a volunteer or the amount of material recycled
• Human capital measured the skills, confidence and progress made by individual volunteers
• Economic capital measures the financial input of the volunteer’s work
• Social Capital: this measures the number of relationships, networks and bonds of trust that are built between people and which result in stronger community activity.
• Cultural capital: this measured increases in volunteer’s sense of cultural identity.
We then talked to three stakeholder groups, volunteers, staff and service users, about their experience of volunteering within the organization. We analyzed the information using a traffic light system. This told us those areas that are working well (green light), those areas that will need attention (amber) and areas that need immediate attention (red light).
All the information collected contributed to the impact assessment. Once this was complete a report was written and presented to the Board of Directors and to the volunteer managers. We also sent this report out to staff, service users and volunteers.
The volunteer managers decided on future priorities and, from those, an implementation plan has been developed for this year. Throughout the work we had ongoing support from a VDS Project Officer.
Our Outcomes
We found out some things that were really important to our work, for example, we:
• now have evidence to prove volunteering is good for volunteers. It improves their well-being, self-confidence and self-esteem. Especially for those volunteers with experience of mental health difficulties. This has enabled us to further develop our volunteer roles to maximize the volunteer experience for people experiencing mental health difficulties;
• also have evidence to prove that service users really benefit from having someone in their life who isn’t paid to be there;
• have been able to increase the number of volunteers involved in our work. We are now confident that we work well with volunteers and that staff are no longer anxious about working alongside volunteers;
• have used the evidence of good practice within our organization to support grant applications for a Volunteer Coordinator post.
One great thing – getting the right kind of support and learning with others
The support from VDS helped us to get what we needed from the Toolkit. We benefited from getting direct support but also from being part of a wider group of organizations using the Toolkit and taking part in peer support sessions. The support was particularly important at the analysis and reporting stages.
The peer group sessions allowed us to exchange ideas and gave us help with time management and the language and concepts used in the Toolkit. Coming into contact with other organizations that use volunteers also helped us to develop new partnerships.
Lessons learnt
• Be clear with service users when people are volunteers. We found out that service users really appreciate that volunteers give up their time.
• We always valued our volunteers but now understand more clearly the effect it has on their self esteem and sense of belonging.
• It is worthwhile developing a volunteering strategy for your whole organization that takes into account the needs of volunteers, staff & service users. This is a good way to make sure that the effects of volunteering are acknowledged.
• Involving all stakeholders is important. It has allowed us to look at what we do well and develop in areas where we could improve.
• Evidence is much more powerful that anecdotes, but collecting it takes longer than expected.
