Developing a tailored Volunteer Programme
In My Shoes Theatre (IMST) Group is a community theatre group for young adults, aged 18-32 years, who have disabilities both learning and physical.
In September 2024, Emily (the founder of IMST) was connected to the Action Together Volunteering team through our Capacity Building team. IMST recognised the need to begin recruiting volunteers to support the growth of their organisation, and wanted support to design and develop a volunteering programme.
The Volunteering team worked with IMST to support them to develop a clear vision for their volunteers; why they wanted to recruit them, what they would be doing, and how they would be supported during their volunteering journey. Due to the nature of the work IMST carry out, Emily was keen to make sure that they had the correct policies and procedures in place to begin safely recruiting volunteers.
An initial meeting between Emily and the Volunteering team was set-up. The purpose of this meeting was to learn more about IMST as an organisation, their purpose, their current activities, plans for the future, and how they envisioned volunteers would strengthen their work.
We worked with IMST to develop a plan which detailed the key actions/ priorities that needed to be completed to develop a robust and supportive volunteering programme (this included development of a volunteer policy, role descriptions, application/ recruitment process, induction, and consideration of training requirements).
Emily was signposted to templates of the required documents through our Volunteer Manager Zone, which provided her with a framework to build upon. The Volunteering team worked at Emily’s pace and were on-hand to support her through the process, providing feedback and suggestions on draft documentation. Once these documents had been approved we begun to develop a recruitment plan, utilising Action Together’s online brokerage site, social media, and links to Health & Social Care programmes at Oldham College.
We arranged an in-person meeting to provide a demonstration of our website and use of the Volunteer Manager account, and the team provided remote support throughout the recruitment process, providing guidance to Emily when she was preparing to meet with potential volunteers for the first time, and to take them through the application / interview and DBS process.
IMST have now successfully recruited their first Creative Support volunteers who help to facilitate their theatre activity groups for adults with disabilities.
Sparkling Feedback
Emily provided us with feedback around the support she received from Action Together’s Volunteer team:
“I’m really grateful for the support, with us being a small organisation and never having recruited volunteers before, the thought of doing this was daunting at first, but you helped us feel like we weren’t alone. Particularly the support around creating the right documents, I found this really useful… When we were able to create our own Volunteer Handbook and provide this to our new volunteers, I felt that we’d become established and really professional”
“It was great that I had been working with you to get everything in place, and once I’d recruited my volunteers I was able to refer them back to you and your training, that was really helpful… I want to keep up to date with the training you provide, we did our safeguarding with you and I’d love to book my volunteers on to any more that might be appropriate”.
“My volunteers are fantastic and I’m so happy! We’re like a family and we care about each other… We’ve created a strong network of support in the group… There’s never a dull moment and there’s loads of laugher!”
Get in touch!
If, like In My Shoes Theatre Group, you would like support in developing a volunteer programme that fits your organisations needs, we can help!
