Recruiting and retaining volunteers
There can be many reasons why recruiting and retaining volunteers may be a challenge, and each group will have their own experiences. The following resources were co designed with volunteers and colleagues who offer volunteer opportunities. Created with colleagues in Glasgow, we hope these are helpful for colleagues in Argyll and Bute also. The Argyll and Bute Community Directory can offer more information for services in your area https://www.argylltsi.org/directory/
These resources include
Ideas for recruiting and retaining volunteers https://www.copescotland.com/resources/recruiting-and-retaining-volunteers
This deck of 37 slides offer an introduction to some of the issues to consider around mental health and volunteering and also, how to support someone who has a mental health condition to volunteer with your organisation. This is a general slide deck and not a replacement for more formal training or learning. However, the content may be helpful for reflection and contains a resource list for other sources of information. https://www.copescotland.com/resources/volunteering-and-mental-health-awareness
This slide deck offers some ideas for a workshop on selfcare for volunteers https://www.copescotland.com/resources/volunteers-selfcare-workshop
When times are challenging the energy of the team can become depleted, this resource may be of interest around exploring ideas to reenergise the team which includes the energy of volunteers https://www.copescotland.com/resources/team-and-networks-energy-levels
A challenge sometimes when people offer their time to help others is that there can be a risk of feeling somehow responsible to try and fix it all and that can make it hard to set boundaries, however, when we do not set boundaries this can lead to further challenges. These resources may be of interest https://www.copescotland.com/resources/boundaries-postcard
Being exposed to the suffering of others, can lead to compassion fatigue and burnout. These resources may be of interest https://www.copescotland.com/resources/compassion-fatigue
There are many more resources on our site, please feel free to visit and share, you can also sign up for our newsletter. This offers an example of our winter newsletter offering ideas for wellbeing for winter and the festive period
https://mailchi.mp/cae56976e2b5/december-newsletter-7230858
Thanks for reading
Kind regards
Hilda