About volunteering

Volunteering is the commitment of time and energy, for the benefit of society and the community, the environment, and others. It is unpaid and undertaken freely and by choice.

Employer Supported Volunteering (ESV) is when organisations actively support and encourage their employees to volunteer. This can take many forms from an employer freeing up time for employees to do their own volunteering, as well as formal ESV programmes.

Whatever form it takes, ESV is becoming more popular as it allows organisations to make a big difference through volunteering.

We are very keen to encourage local companies to support employees to be actively involved in the community by contributing their time and skills.

Benefits of volunteering

Companies can benefit from ESV in a number of ways including:

• Providing personal development opportunities for employees
• Helping to motivate staff
• Recruiting and retaining staff
• Bringing new skills/experience/ideas into the organisation
• Marketing the company positively
• Providing effective training
• Team building
• Developing Volunteering Opportunities

Our Connect Dacorum service can work with local volunteer-involving organisations to provide a range of ESV opportunities for local companies and organisations including:

Practical ones such as:

• Gardening
• Decorating
• Community Clean Ups
• Conservation

Professional ones including:

• Accountancy
• IT
• HR
• Social Media
• Governance
• Marketing
• Business planning
• Trustees
• Personal Volunteering
• CV and interview skills

Through working with employers, we aim to encourage individual employees to get involved with volunteering with projects that they have a personal interest or passion in.

Connect Dacorum Volunteer Brokerage Service

Connect Dacorum works very closely with the Volunteer Centre Dacorum which are both services of local charity Community Action Dacorum.  We can support organisations to develop, deliver, manage and evaluate a successful ESV scheme as part of our Volunteer Brokerage Service.

Connect Dacorum provides a Bronze | Silver | Gold service to suit your budget.

Bronze includes:

• Finding a suitable volunteering activity for the company

Silver includes the above plus:

• Liaise with the company and the volunteer-involving organisation
• Conduct a site visit at the volunteer-involving organisation
• Agree a budget for cost of materials
• Advise on any equipment needed for the activity

Gold includes the above plus:          

• Plan the day’s activities
• Communicate with the company regarding logistics for the day
• Attend the activity at the start and end of the volunteering day to see progress
• Provide photos and feedback after the activity
• Provide a Thank You Certificate to each volunteer on completion