Volunteers are the lifeblood of Action Foundation and we’re keen to make their experience of working with our charity as rewarding and positive as possible. So we’ve embarked on a review of how we look after the 200+ people who generously give their time freely to help asylum seekers and refugees. In this blog, our Chief Executive, Duncan McAuley talks about our plans to put volunteers at the heart of our strategy over the next five years and beyond.

By Duncan McAuley, CEO Action Foundation

One of our Strategic Priorities is to invest in and develop volunteering at Action Foundation. 

We have a fantastic group of over 200 volunteers who for years have faithfully served the organisation and the people we support. If you’re reading this, Thank you. We simply couldn’t provide our life changing support to over 1700 individuals each year without your contribution. 

In December around 35 volunteers from across our projects attended our Festive Volunteer Social, which was an opportunity to share some reflections from 2022 and thoughts ahead about 2023 as well as recognise and celebrate the significant contribution volunteers continue to make to Action Foundation. We also completed a short survey with many of you who were present. There’s a summary of the results further down this page.  

We’ve taken some time to digest what was said and will continue doing so over the coming months. Initially, as a result of hearing a sample of your thoughts we’re committing to a number of actions: 

  • We’re going to run another ‘whole organisation’ volunteer event in the summer giving us an opportunity to come together across Action Foundation, celebrate what’s been happening and think ahead to anticipated changes and developments.
  • We’re reviewing the internal systems and structures relating to our recruitment and management of volunteers – specifically which staff are responsible and whether we can further develop the training and support we offer.
  • We’ll send out the survey (or a slightly adapted version) to all volunteers to gain feedback.

For the time being we’re not proposing any changes to how things are run and volunteers will still have a direct point of contact in whichever project or team they volunteer with. There’ll be regular contact about specific meetings, opportunities or training requirements as is normal and as they arise. 

From me and all of us here at Action Foundation 

Thank you!

For more information about becoming a volunteer, visit our Get Involved page 

Survey Results 

  • 100% of volunteers said they would recommend volunteering with Action Foundation to a friend
  • 100% felt that their work was impactful  
  • 86% said they would like more social events for volunteers  
  • 78% said they feel informed and connected to Action Foundation