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Sector Support

Volunteering WA’s sector support extends to advocacy, celebrating volunteers through annual events, the national Volunteer Management Activity, working with Government to recruit emergency volunteers, convening the Minister for Volunteering’s Volunteer Community Reference Group and Volunteer Manager Networks, research and innovation, supporting members, tertiary engagement, and connecting organisations with the corporate sector.

Volunteering WA’s mission is to lead, advance and celebrate volunteering in Western Australia. During the 2020-21 year, Volunteering WA continued to strengthen sector development by building capacity and enabling organisations to deliver efficient and effective services to the communities they serve.

VIOHelp service

With over 745 members, Volunteering WA launched the new VIOHelp service in 2020-21. 182 VIOs accessed the service with almost 200 different management, compliance and governance questions.

Questions ranged from simple to complex, from requests for resources to clarification of good practice around volunteer reimbursements, screening, or inclusive practice. Many queries related to the areas of work health and safety, discrimination, and reporting volunteer contributions. Support on how to respond to COVID-19 was also a hot topic, with questions on how to prepare COVID safety plans, managing the safe return of volunteers, and vaccines. Many of the VIOHelp FAQ queries have been added to the Resources section of the Volunteering WA, where VIOs can also find downloadable guides.

Training and Development

Volunteering WA had a long list of training workshops and seminars open to VIOs throughout the year as well as the opportunity for organisations to invite our Training Manager to deliver tailored sessions at their premise. To meet the challenges of remote working during COVID-19, there was a shift to more online learning, webinars and e-resources.

Training topics covered volunteer recruitment and retention, responding to the pandemic, management and leadership, legislation and compliance, grant writing, regulatory reforms, risk management, and diversity and cultural awareness. With our large and diverse membership base, our training programs are tailored to suit beginners to advanced volunteer managers by providing valuable leadership training, we help build and strengthen the knowledge and capacity of the volunteering sector.

Our in-person training workshops were significantly impacted throughout the year with many workshops cancelled or rescheduled. This however gave our team capacity to develop new courses and workshop topics based on feedback from our members. Our Training Manager delivered 23 workshops/training sessions with 996 attendees, and was able to invest significant time in developing six brand new programs that were introduced throughout the year, including:

  1. Continuous Professional Development (CPD)
  2. Returning to Programs and Volunteering during COVID-19
  3. Leading the Way: A foundation course for volunteer managers
  4. Developing Successful Virtual Volunteering Programs
  5. Volunteer Restart Scholarship (VRS) Program
  6. Certificate IV in Coordination of Volunteer Management

Feedback from training continues to be overwhelmingly positive and demonstrates that people take the learnings back and apply to their own programs.

VWA’s Consultancy Service

Through the year, Volunteering WA successfully completed two consultancy projects for Mosaic Community Care and WA Police & Community Youth Services (PCYC). These projects involved developing a volunteer strategy and a volunteer management plan. In both cases, the work included full gap analysis against the National Standards for Volunteer Involvement, stakeholder consultation activities, internal and external environmental assessments and delivery of top level and detailed recommendations for action and implementation.

“The scope was spot on and the deliverables were exactly what we wanted. The report and the action plan is perfect, high quality and just what we need to move the project forward. Emily and Jane were a delight to work with.” ~ Mosaic