Organisations

Volunteer Managers Forum

The Volunteer Managers Forum (VMF) is open to our member organisations. It is an informal group which allows volunteer managers and coordinators (paid or unpaid) to come together to share their knowledge and experience. It’s a useful networking forum. Joining the VMF is a fantastic opportunity for organisations to enhance their volunteer management practices. Please see our Good Practice Toolkit.

By joining the Volunteer Managers Forum, organisations can benefit from:

  1. Networking: Connect with like-minded people, share experiences, good practice, and learn from each other.
  2. Professional Development: Access to workshops and training sessions specifically designed to enhance the skills of volunteer co-ordinators.
  3. Influencing: Contribute towards the development of local volunteer policies and practices, propose VMF discussion topics and themes for research, as well as feeding into the Single Midlothian Plan and other forums such as the Integration Joined Board.
  4. Resource sharing: Gain access to a wealth of resources and information from other VMF participants.
  5. Problem Solving: Engage in discussions about common challenges faced in volunteer management. Benefit from the “collective wisdom” of either the experienced professionals or those who have just started afresh and are tackling similar issues and challenges.
  6. Inspiration: Be inspired by success stories of others, innovative approaches, achievements. This often inspires or motivates organisations to implement new strategies, to result in better services and improved volunteer strategies.

Being part of the forum amplifies the impact of individual organisations and can promote positive change in the sector.

Feedback from the group is used to inform community planning, and group members collaborate on joint projects such as the ‘Big Thank You’ event for local volunteers, and an annual Volunteer Recruitment Fair. Each meeting has a discussion topic and/or a guest speaker.

Examples of meeting topics include:

  • Volunteer Recruitment and Promotion
  • Volunteer Retention and Training opportunities
  • National Volunteers’ Week
  • Cyber safety and local organisations
  • Climate change and volunteering

Meetings are normally held on a quarterly basis. Following recent feedback from the members, we currently have two face-to-face, one hybrid, and one online meeting. If the meeting is in-person, we make attempts to meet in different Third Sector locations where members can learn first-hand from the work of the others.

Joining the Volunteer Managers Forum is a perk of Volunteer Midlothian Membership. Learn more about Membership here.

For more information about Volunteer Midlothian membership or the forum contact us.