Completed Projects

Completed projects according to year

• 2001
• 2002
• 2003
• 2004
• 2005
• 2006
• 2007
• 2008
• 2009
• 2010

2001

Able Volunteers

This project was established by The National Development Team, an organisation which works with people with learning difficulties, is engaged in some action research about supporting people with learning difficulties and mental health problems as volunteers. The project has European funding and will be looking to transfer lessons and good practice among European Partners.

Volunteering' is a culturally grounded concept with implicit cultural references. The term conjures up certain images in our minds, with limited transferability. The Institute undertook an exploration of the implications of the dominant Western construct of volunteering. An introductory paper outlining the issues was been written, covering the following subjects:

• the diversity of actions often hidden within the term volunteering'
• ways in which the term has been constructed, how it may marginalise other activities, especially informal, that take place at a community level
• how transferable the Western concept is developing bottom-up interpretations of culturally specific civil life.

Please click through to the Evidence Bank for more information

The Institute was commissioned by the United Nations to evaluate IYV2001, in association with the Development Resources Centre in South Africa . IYV is being celebrated in over 130 countries and a two-tier methodology has been developed to ensure a balance is struck between breadth and depth of coverage:

All participating countries which had established national committees were asked to complete two questionnaires during the course of the year - the first aimed at providing an assessment of the state of volunteering prior to the year; the second aimed at assessing the impact of the year.

In addition detailed case studies were carried out in seven countries - Canada , Hungary , Trinidad and Tobago , Laos , Brazil , Uganda and the Lebanon - to assess the impact of the year in greater detail.

2002

Investing in Volunteers (IiV)

IiV is a quality system being pioneered in four South London boroughs (the area known as Wandle Valley ). In the same way that Investors in People scrutinises systems for managing and developing paid staff, IiV looks at how volunteer involving organisations can guarantee a quality experience for volunteers. The Institute worked with the Wandle Valley partners to provide an independent evaluation of the programme.

2003

BEARR Work with Povolzhe on the development of volunteering in Samara, Russia

The Institute was involved as a partner with the BEARR Trust and a Russian voluntary sector partner, Povolzhe', in a project being funded by the government's Partnership in the Non-Profit Sector (Department for International Development). The project aims were to promote capacity building for developing volunteering in NGOs and small projects in Samara , Russia . A group of practitioners and researchers involved in volunteering and community development visited Samara with the aim of sharing British experience in the field of volunteering. The project did the following:

provided advice and dissemination of best practice information for small scale projects/NGOs

gave advice on developing local volunteering infrastructure and networks of volunteers specialising in support to people with disabilities, care for older people, welfare of children in institutional care and re-integration of young people leaving prison

disseminated material on good practice guidelines from the National Centre for Volunteering on volunteer management, diversity, good practice, and community development

stimulated and contributed to education and training on volunteer management for projects in Samara.

The Institute was involved in the development of a concept of volunteering relevant to the situation in Russia . The BEARR Trust is an information and resource centre for UK voluntary organisations working in the former Soviet Union , and for their partner organisations Povolzhe is a cultural/ecological resource centre for other NGOs in the oblast region (Samara).

This research explores how people relate their volunteering to their faith. It reports some ways in which voluntary action is organised in different communities and connects to other communities and networks , both faith based and secular. It also looks at the issue of how the government is trying to engage faith communities as service providers in some of its community initiatives.

Please click through to the Evidence Bank for more information

The RTPI commissioned us to undertake a study of volunteering within Planning Aid, a voluntary service offering free, independent and professional advice on town planning matters to community groups and individuals who cannot afford to employ a planning consultant.

The study looked at the profile of volunteers currently involved in the scheme and the suggested ways of encouraging RTPI members to become volunteers and how to better support and involve volunteers in the future.

A report on research commissioned by the DfES looking at under-represented groups as school governors has been published.

The groups investigated were: people from black and other minority ethnic groups, young people, disabled people, lone parents, people on low incomes and people who are unemployed, and business people.

2004

Barclays Employee Volunteering

Barclays commissioned us to evaluate the impacts of their employee-volunteering scheme on a range of stakeholders and to tease out the lessons for other companies. We sent questionnaires, held focus groups and conducted interviews with key stakeholders including employee volunteers, staff who had not volunteered through Barclays, managers, and placement organisations. The research was completed in September 2004.

Click through to the Evidence Bank for more information

The BBC Neighbourhood Gardener initiative is based on a US programme called Master Gardeners, in which volunteer gardeners are encouraged to take a short course and then run gardening projects for the local community.

An evaluation of this programme has been undertaken through the use of questionnaires, interviews and focus groups with a range of key stakeholders.

This project was supported by the Community Fund. The project looked at the relationship between volunteering and social exclusion and concentrated on three groups for whom social exclusion can be an issue - people from black and minority ethnic communities, disabled people and offenders/ex-offenders. The aims of the project are to examine:

• barriers - organisational, attitudinal and institutional - which prevent people from these groups from volunteering
• steps which need to be undertaken to enable access for into volunteering
• benefits of active participation as volunteers in the community, both for the individuals from these groups and the wider community.

The geographical locations chosen for this study were the London Borough of Haringey, Sheffield and East Devon . For further details on the project visit our website:

Please click through to the Evidence Bank for more information

The Voluntary Service Unit of University College London commissioned us to undertake an impact evaluation of volunteering on students' employability and on the local community. As well as survey research, focus groups and telephone interviews have been undertaken. The project was completed in September 2004.