General Manager's Report 2012
This year has seen a marked increase in the services delivered by Volunteering Auckland. The number of people accessing voluntary opportunities continues to grow as does accessing information about volunteering online. We are also seeing a marked growth in requests for assistance to support and grow volunteer involving programmes from our membership.
The recession may have passed but the effects continue with a continuing uncertain funding environment within which we are all needing to operate. Its constraints on our operating budgets, continues to compel us all to look for fresh and innovative ways of both recruiting and retaining volunteers in order to deliver our services.
In this respect we have expanded on the work for our virtual presence begun last year by working towards an online referral system including self-referral options for people looking to volunteer. This phase of development will allow online referrals to volunteer roles and for members to upload volunteer roles. Over 4,500 people are currently looking on our website each month for ways to contribute to their community. Volunteering Auckland sees this as an opportunity to enable more people to get involved if we have the mechanisms to enable this. Another exciting project that Volunteering Auckland was involved with this year was the Auckland Virtual Volunteering project – looking at how to engage volunteers online for short bursts of time for projects from reviewing marketing plans to assisting create a facebook presence.
Perhaps the most significant area of our work has been in the support and development of NfP organisation’s volunteer involving programmes. The community & voluntary sector is realising that without this valuable resource, volunteers, we would not be able to undertake the level of work expected of us. However, volunteering does not happen in a vacuum – work is needed to ensure volunteer-involving organisations have the processes and practices in place to ensure effective engagement and contribution by volunteers.
To ensure we are delivering effectively to our member organisation, a membership review was started this year looking at who are our members, what services do they access, and what support do they need. The outcomes of this review will be completed within the next reporting period.
As a final note, we were pleased to host the Minister Jo Goodhew on a visit to one of our member organisations to showcase how volunteering supports their work. It was great to see the difference even one volunteer can make!
Kia ora koutou ngā tīpuna, kia ora koutou ngā tāngata ki kōnei, kia ora koutou a muri ake nei i ngā tāngata. He whakapono i roto tenei tūao me tuku noa te tāima ki a rātau me tuku noa te mātauranga ki a rātau.
Thank you to our people from the past, thank you to our people today, thank you to our people in the future. The most important thing in volunteering is your time, your skills, and your knowledge!
Cheryll Martin, General Manager
