Welcome to VolunteerWiki!

This resource has been developed by Volunteer Edinburgh with support from partners, to give volunteer managers access to high quality, reliable and up to date information on managing volunteers. Whether you are just starting out involving volunteers or you have been managing volunteers for many years, we aim to cover a wide range of volunteer management issues and give you access to the knowledge that you need. To make life even easier we have example policies and forms which anyone is free to download and use.

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References to legislation

Although most good practice in involving volunteers translates the world over, throughout VolunteerWiki there are, where appropriate, references to legislation. It is important for users to note that such legislation applies to the United Kingdom and users in other territories should ensure compliance and reference to legislation applicable in their location.

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Who are our partners?

The information contained within VolunteerWiki has been developed by Volunteer Edinburgh with support from Volunteer Glasgow.

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How do I contribute?

The ambition of Volunteer Edinburgh is that VolunteerWiki builds into the “go to” place for volunteer managers to get good quality, reliable advice. For that ambition to be realised we want experienced and trusted partners to contribute.

We use a trusted partner model for contributors because we want to maintain the high quality of the information that VolunteerWiki contains. If you are an experienced volunteers manager, ideally in Scotland, then we would be very happy to hear from you.

One-off contributor

If you would like an article (that how we refer to the individual entries on the wiki) submitted then that can be simply done by emailing a word document and we will add it for you. We do reserve the right to alter the content to keep the “voice” of the consistent. However if we do suggest changes we will ask your permission before we make it live.

Regular contributor

If you would like to be a regular contributor then we can give you a log in. This will allow you to make changes to any part of the wiki. With such power comes responsibility so we will ask you to complete a simple agreement with us. Even when you make an entry with a user account it gets verified before publication. This is part of the standard programme that we are using and enables us to track changes and contributions.

If you are interested in becoming a contributor please contact javier.tejera@volunteeredinburgh.org.uk.

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What happens if I disagree with something on the wiki?

This is very much about building a community of knowledge and inevitably there will sometimes be differing views. Rather than be prescriptive “this is how it should be done” we’d rather present alternative views and let the reader decide which is correct for them.

So, for example, one volunteer manager might think application forms are a barrier and a waste of time. Another may think they are essential for the roles they are advertising. Both viewpoints are equally valid and it is about presenting the alternate views and alternate set of circumstances where the user of the wiki can decide what is correct for them.

Of course there are times when legislation has to be followed and there is no grey area.