Volunteerism is essential to ALONE; it shows how people in the community can support each other. Investing in Volunteers (IiV) is the UK quality standard for good practice in volunteer management. It is owned by the lead volunteer development agencies, the UK Volunteering Forum (UKVF). This document reports the assessment done by the IiV in May 2019 prior awarding ALONE with the IiV quality mark. At the time of the first assessment in 2015, ALONE had 160 volunteers, increasing to 800 active volunteers by 2019. This assessment involves interviews with volunteers and staff, and the analysis of written policy documents. It demonstrates that ALONE recognises volunteering as a two-way benefit process and it is committed to allocate appropriate resources in working with all volunteers. ALONE reflects volunteers’ diversity and ensures they are protected from physical, financial and emotional harm arising from volunteering.
The organisation has developed appropriate and valuable roles for the volunteers and has committed to use fair, efficient, clear and consistent recruitment procedures in introducing volunteers to their role. ALONE takes account of the varying support and supervision needs of volunteers and it is aware of the need to give volunteers recognition. While ALONE met all the assessment requirements, the IiV added suggestions for improvement. These include to engage with external volunteer management trainings, to collect more detailed diversity information from volunteers and create a document for monitoring, to review the Volunteer Leadership Group programme to suit better both volunteers and organisational needs and, to provide gathering opportunities for volunteers at local or regional levels to give feedback and foster a sense of community. This report demonstrated how ALONE undertakes quality and transparency assessments from external evaluators to improve risk management and volunteer experience.
