Volunteer Development Agencies Impact Assessment Toolkit

The Institute for Volunteering Research had developed a specific Impact Assessment Toolkit for Volunteer Development Agencies (VDA), particularly aimed at Volunteer Centres. The toolkit is built around assessing the impact of the six core functions of a VDA and helps organisation carry out research for internal and external use on the impact of their work on different stakeholder groups. We are happy to announce that this publication is about to be published and Volunteer Centres will receive one free copy each!

To help organisations familiarise themselves with the toolkit and to learn more about methods and the impact of research we are organising ten workshops across England. We are offering one free place each to Volunteer Centres who are members of Volunteering England to participate in these one-day training events. Numbers on each workshop are limited so hurry up and book your place.

The toolkit has been piloted with volunteer centres and their experience is included as case studies. Here is what volunteer managers from the pilot projects said:

"It is just what we need. The toolkit will make a volunteer centre manager’s life much easier”

“The assessment has highlighted a large range of issues that we want to address. Our next step is to look at possible areas for future work, prioritise them and put together an action plan.”

- Download the booking form (MS Word)

New Voluntary Sector Researchers’ Session at the NCVO/VSSN Research Conference

University of Warwick
September 5th, 2007
2pm – 5.45 pm

Are you relatively new to the field of research on issues relating to the voluntary sector and/or volunteering? Then this session could be of interest to you.

For a number of years, as part of the annual NCVO/VSSN Voluntary Sector Researchers Conference, a special session will be run for "new" researchers. The session is aimed at those who are relatively new to the field of voluntary sector research and is an opportunity to meet, discuss research and share ideas.

We have a great line up this year. Seven ‘new researchers’ will discuss their work, covering a wide range of topics and issues. The session also includes a guest speaker presentation by Mike Aiken on the ‘Dilemmas and magic moments in researching the voluntary sector’. Please find the draft programme for the session here.

You can attend the session either as part of the main conference (see below), or you can come along to just this session free of charge – just email me at joanna.machin@volunteeringengland.org to let me know if you are planning to attend.

To book a place to attend the full conference and for details about the conference follow this link  http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/research/events