As part of my personal goals this year, I would like to volunteer some of my time as a trainer to a charity or a ‘not for profit’ organisation. Some of the areas that I train in are: Presentation skills, Creative thinking, Teambuilding, Effective communication, Leadership and Business planning.
I was wondering how I could best go about getting started with this? Maybe some of you already do similar work and could provide some ideas. Thanks in advance
Ramzan Rafique
11 Responses
Volunteering for charities
I have volunteered my skills in this way and thoroughly recommend the experience. I enjoyed the work, and gained satisfaction from knowing that a favoured charity received a substantial donation in kind.
I contacted the HR Directors of several of my favoured charities, whose work interested me. Several were rather sceptical that this was a devious sales ploy! I found the telephone the most effective method.
So, give it a go – who knows you just might be inundated with requests for help after asking this question…..
Rosie Gray
Voluntary training work
Dear Ramzan,
We are a not-for-profit housing association based in Leeds(63 employees) with a very high level of commitment to staff development and training, but no in-house training delivery expertise. My role is Corporate Services Manager and is generic. I’d be very happy to talk to you about volunteering opportunities if you are interested.
Voluntary training
We are a not-for-profit scientific research and publishing organisation based in Wallingford, Oxon, working mainly in developing countries to enhance livelihoods and could be very interested in some of the training that you are offering
Talk to your local CVS.
It depends whether you want to work for a particular charity or several different ones. Talk to your local CVS (Council for Voluntary Services). Some areas even have larger Voluntary Sector Training Consortiums who may want to use you.
Very interested.
Ramzan, I think that this is a commendable personal goal and would love to discuss it with you further.
I am the Training Coordinator for a registered charity that helps families and individuals who are experiencing financial difficulty.
The organisation has only recently started to address training in-house, so there is a lot of catching up to do, and only one of me!
Our staff do a wonderful job helping thousands of people out of debt every year and they really deserve more in the way of development.
Our head office is based in central Leeds and we employ 165 staff nationwide.
If you would like to discuss this further, please contact me at the address below:
emilys@cccs.co.uk
Contact addresses that may be helpful
If you live in England contact the national centre for volunteering: http://www.volunteering.org.uk if you live in Scotland contact Volunteer Development Scotland: http://www.vds.org.uk
Both should be able to help you make contact with voluntary organisations seeking trainers. Have fun, it should be, Wendy
VOLUNTEER TRAINER
DO YOU HAVE ANY INTEREST IN TRAINING IN THE UNITED STATES?
THANK YOU,
KARI UHLMAN
COUNTY OF SACRAMENTO
PROBATION TRAINING UNIT
CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES
UHLMANK@SACCOUNTY.NET
TrainerBase entry
Have you registered on TrainerBase at http://www.trainerbase.co.uk and specified that you offer “Charity discounts”?
Education Action Zones
Try contacting one of these. I do some free training for them and they are able to claim the equivalent cost of the training from the Dfes as match funding so your time has double the impact
Try the Goodwill Gallery
I make services available through The Goodwill Gallery (http://www.goodwillgallery.co.uk/). This may give you a useful route.
Mike
Some choices
There are a couple of things that you may wish to consider.
Do you have a list of preferred charities? Then I suggest contacting them directly through the HR/Training dept.
Do you want to give training to a wider number of charities and voluntary groups? Then go the CVS route as mentioned earlier. The vast majority of charities and voluntary groups are small local organisations that you will probably never hear of. And there are huge numbers of local organisations. In the London Borough of Brent alone we have over 600 organisations. In my opinion these are the ones that need the support to become sustainable. But as Training and development officer of Brent CVS I am biased.
Details of Councils for Voluntary Service can be obtained from the NACVS, website http://www.nacvs.org.uk
While free training is nice, discounts are very welcome as well.
To open this discussion wider. If commercial organisations can donate HR and training staff time to give talks or training to local charities it would be immensely beneficial.
Regards
Neil