Evaluation
Evaluating the impact of volunteering on your organisation and making this more widely known can be vital in helping to promote volunteering inside and outside the organisation.
Monitoring and evaluation of the programme should be given careful consideration. The purpose is to identify weakness and reward achievement. Without any measurements of achievement it is impossible to say whether the programme is successful or not. All monitoring and evaluation should be clearly linked to the programme's objectives, against which they can be measured.
Information might include:
- Diversity information e.g. age, gender, ethnicity
- How volunteers heard about the programme
- Roles and hours undertaken by volunteers
- Use of resources
- Costs e.g. expenses, administration, training
- Effectiveness of systems and procedures e.g. recruitment
- Public perceptions of volunteers
- Reasons for leaving.
Having collected the relevant data, it is necessary to review and evaluate it. For evaluation to be effective there must be four essential factors:
- The objectives should be clear from the beginning and should be written down
- There must be sufficient relevant data available about what has happened
- The evaluation must be independent and unbiased. This means that the people undertaking it must be willing to be critical of the programme and its achievements
- Following the evaluation there must be a willingness to change the things that are wrong with the programme.
National Occupational Standards
The links below will take you to relevant documents produced by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. These are part of their draft National Occupational Standards which are currently being developed.
Useful Documents
These documents are supplied as examples of good practice by participating forces and Volunteering England, we remain grateful to our colleagues in the Met and Thames Valley Police.
