Why get your student group involved in volunteering?

Volunteering is a great way for your student group to get together and involved in something with a purpose. It is a great way to make new friends and become part of the local community as well as developing new skills and experiences. It also allows student groups to do positive work as a group either on campus for other students or off campus with the local community.

Getting Started;

• Be realistic. Think about the number of members you have; how many would want to be involved, how much they will enjoy the opportunity and how helpful and useful you would be to the charity or club your offering to support.  
• Big events, marshalling, or ushering people at special events or local community events such as fairs, fun runs, bucket shakes, fundraisers, outdoor conservation, maintaining or cleaning up land, sea and outside spaces and physical work are all types of volunteering for large groups.  
• Volunteering with children or vulnerable people can be difficult to organise with a group and requires a lot of paper work including DBS checks. Its advised that large groups are inappropriate for this kind of volunteering.
• Do you have a particular charity or club that your club or society is passionate about and offer time and support to? Speak to them and see what they would like help with and where volunteers could be useful.
• Think about the types of people you have in your group - what they would enjoy doing, what will they get from volunteering? Volunteers to need to enjoy their experiences and benefit from it.   
• Location and transport – Consider accessing locations and making it easy for members.
• Fun! Make sure whatever you are doing is fun and ensure members have fun and enjoy themselves, or they won’t want to do it again.

Logging Your Hours - Volunteer Recognition Scheme

All the volunteering hours that you do counts towards our reward and recognition scheme. This can include committee role jobs, helping at student group events, and volunteering within the community. You recieve recognition from 25, 50, 100 and 200 hours of volunteering. 

To recieve recognition you will need to log your hours with our Volunteer Toolkit. You will need to register your details and then ou can start logging. Please keep and eye on you emails as the Activities department may get in touch to ask for more information about your volunteering journey and also let you know that your rewards are ready to be picked up.