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Links:
Forms:
- Agency Registration form
- Request for Volunteers form
- Form a small Steering Committee of interested people.
- Gather information from the other Volunteer Centres already operating in New Zealand.
- Enlist the help of Local Council (Community services division) if possible.
- Advertise public meetings for all interested parties in local newspapers, radio community notice boards, flyers to community and voluntary organisations who involve volunteers.
- If there is community support form an Incorporated Society to administer the Centre. Decide on Aims, Objectives and plans.
- Apply for initial seed funding from private trusts, City Council and community trusts.
- Decide where the Centre should be located (preferably central with car parking available), and set an opening date.
- Design promotional material about the Volunteer Centre and its function:
- Registration forms for organisations involving volunteers;
- Registration forms for potential Volunteers;
- Job description forms.
A set of generic forms for your use are here.
- Steering Committee members should personally visit organisations which involve volunteers. Complete an Agency Registration Form and a detailed Job description for Volunteers with the volunteer Co-ordinator or Manager.
- N.B. It is most important to have volunteer opportunities available before advertising for volunteers.
- Set up a simple administration system to handle potential volunteers, registering organisations, voluntary staff, statistics, telephone calls etc.
- Recruit and train staff for the Centre; e.g. a co-ordinator, volunteers to man the Centre and a roster.
- Advertise the opening of the Volunteer Centre extensively. Try for local TV news coverage, newspapers (with photos) radio news.
- You Are There. Congratulations!!
- Don't Forget: Public Relations and Publicity are priorities along with funding applications to ensure your continued success.
What makes a Volunteer Centre?
Volunteer Centres share a common philosophy and vision:
- To uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the vision, definition of volunteering, purpose beliefs and values as set out in the constitution of Volunteering New Zealand.
Volunteer Centres agree on common principles:
- Volunteers are given sufficient information and support to make informed choices about volunteering.
- Volunteers are referred only to not-for-profit organisations and/or projects which are registered with a Member Volunteer Centre.
- Volunteers are not referred directly to individuals
- A volunteer is not knowingly referred to a job which replaces a paid position.
- Confidentiality is maintained.
Volunteer Centres recognise that Volunteering:
- Has benefits for the volunteer and the common good.
- Must always be free of coercion.
- Is not to be linked to the receipt of benefits, financial or equivalents.
- Is a not for profit activity.
- Must not be a pre-requisite (or a co-requisite) to paid work.
- Respects the rights and expectations of others.
- Can be an end in itself.
Volunteer Centres are:
- Not-for-profit.
- Independently organised.
- Community-initiated.
- Registered charitable trusts or incorporated societies.
Volunteer Centres provide services.
- Recruitment & referral service of volunteers to volunteer opportunities within registered agencies.
- Training for individuals and not-for-profit agencies.
- Support not-for-profit agencies by promoting best practice in volunteer management.
- Advocacy for and on behalf of volunteers and not-for-profit agencies.
Volunteer Centres will:
- Maintain relevant, up-to-date information on volunteering opportunities
- Encourage re-imbursement of out-of-pocket expenses incurred through volunteering
- Refer volunteers to a wide range of registered not-for-profit organisations and/or projects involving volunteers
- Provide management and organisational support to organisations and/or projects involving volunteers
- Conform with all relevant government legislation, including the Employment Relations Act 2000, Human Rights Act 1993, Privacy Act 1993 and Occupational Safety and Health legislation
- Provide a focal point for volunteering in their area
- Lobby to local and national government
- Participate in Volunteering New Zealand
Ten Thoughts for Volunteer Centres in New Zealand
- The unique New Zealand contribution to volunteering lies in the patterns of community engagement which emerge from the contrasting nature of our society. We are an extraordinary amalgam of European individualists (migrants or descendants of migrants, who are by their nature individualists within their home society) and Polynesian collectivists. We share an entrepreneurial spirit and a love of the land. The ways that patterns of volunteering illustrate this are little researched. Volunteer Centres have in general not explored this area, and this has had some political implications.
- The presence of quality volunteering is at the heart of successful communities. Volunteering in such environments makes people move home less, reduces crime and improves health. They transform communities into places which enhance people’s lives. Volunteering is not an optional add-on to society; it is fundamental to the quality of life.
- Volunteer Centres have a unique role as the only voluntary sector agencies for which volunteering is an end, not the means to an end. They sit in the wider world of volunteering, which touches on the voluntary, statutory and private sectors.
- Volunteer Centres in New Zealand have yet to reach their potential. Examples of Centre functions which have advanced much further overseas include registers of professionals available to sit on Boards, support programmes around volunteers with special needs, consultancy on the performance of volunteer-involving organisations in relation to their volunteers and the use of information technology in volunteer matching. Reasons for New Zealand being at this stage of development include lack of core funding from Government until recently, a tension between aiming for quality service and quantity service and a tendency to focus on welfare sector volunteers rather than the entire spectrum.
- The work of Volunteer Centres is focussed overwhelmingly on the 2% or so of volunteers who enter volunteering or change their volunteering activity through the Volunteer Centre. Centres wil increasingly be judged on their ability to impact on the 98%, particularly through moulding the environment in which they volunteer. Certainly the 2% may be particularly high maintenance, new to the community or just very keen and skilled people, but there are a range of strategic interventions (e.g. mass marketing, developing guidelines on the rights and responsibilities of volunteers, exit surveys on why people leave volunteering, enhanced training programmes) which the 98% could benefit directly or indirectly from. Such strategic interventions have the potential to transform the centrality of the Volunteer Centre to its sectors and communities.
- In New Zealand there is an innate suspicion of national-level organisations, particularly those representing the interests of networks of similar local organisations. It may well have its roots in the devolved structures of Maoridom. Its effect is to magnify the pressures on such organisations - these pressures are not in themselves bad, so long as they do not divert from the task at hand or obscure recognition of the innate importance of a national voice given the power structures of the nation.
- New Zealand is too small a nation, with too weak a voluntary sector national-level scene, to separately sustain the entities which exist independently in many other nations. Volunteering New Zealand is an efficient concept and structure, and has to meet the challenge of developing the synergy of a "centre of expertise" on volunteering as well as the responsiveness of a networking and representative organisation. Such a hybrid can exist successfully; its nurturing requires care. Volunteer Centres have a role in their communities as "canaries" in the mines - an early warning of trouble ahead - and this could be a dynamic presence within an expert and authoritative, startegic and evidence-based national organisation.
- The New Zealand voluntary sector is too competitive, and lacking in vision for itself at the local and regional level, to be able to voice its "corporate" needs for development resources and agencies. If Volunteer Centres are seen as the human resources departments of the voluntary sector (also with a foot in the public and private sector doors), they should aspire to be resourced as such. Growth of the recognition of the "local development agency" concept within the sector can only help Centres.
- In contemporary public policy debates, there is a real need for the voice of volunteering. There are some issues (e.g. the role of Government-funded organisations in lobbying and advocacy) which concern the whole voluntary sector in which volunteering should have its voice. There are others (e.g. monitoring of the OSH provisions on volunteering, liability of volunteers in governance positions, the impact of regulations on volunteer-run groups) where the VNZ voice may well be dominant. This work should be visible and loud.
- Volunteers and Volunteer Centres have an important role to play in the development of national-level voluntary sector structures. A strong presence in the developing national voluntary sector forum is important, both as a voice for volunteers which are essential for the health of the voluntary sector, and also as a national presence for those local ‘voluntary sector development" agencies.
© Tim Barnett and Volunteering New Zealand 2004
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