Cambridge & District Volunteer Centre (CDVC) is a Volunteering England accredited centre, offering over 300 different volunteering opportunities at any one time. CDVC is proposing an exciting research project to:
• Evaluate its services to place volunteers into local organisations.
• Assess the value of volunteering in the Cambridge area.
Given that there is a volunteer centre in almost every district nationally and the value placed on volunteering by Government, this research is potentially of national importance.
CDVC currently collects information on the number of enquiries from potential volunteers received, numbers of volunteers placed, numbers of organisations provided with volunteers, as well as qualitative information on the views of organisations, potential volunteers and placed volunteers about the services provided by CDVC.
We need academic research input because:
• The response rates to some of our questionnaires are low, and we find it particularly hard to track volunteers once we have placed them with a voluntary organisation. An academic review of our research methods would enable us to better evaluate our services in the future.
• Research into our services would help us to understand how our services might be improved, thereby enabling us to recruit more volunteers, support more organisations and give volunteers and organisations a better experience.
• We would benefit from academic expertise to assess the value of volunteering locally, which would help us to recruit more volunteers and organisations and to feedback to our funders.
The proposed research project would:
1. Undertake an international review of research methods to assess the value of volunteering and evaluate the services of volunteer-placing organisations.
2. Survey potential volunteers, placed volunteers and member organisations of CDVC, assessing CDVC’s services.
3. Assess the impact of volunteering in the Cambridge district. This might include quantitative evaluations (e.g. financial value of the unpaid work of volunteers in community organisations, unemployment benefits saved for those who find paid employment through volunteering) and qualitative evaluations (e.g. the usefulness of volunteering to those seeking paid employment, the reduction of social isolation for those volunteering).
4. Recommend improvements to CDVC’s services to volunteers and organisations, based on the conclusions of the research undertaken.
5. Review the monitoring and evaluation methods currently used by CDVC and make recommendations as to future research methods to be employed/any improvements which could be made (within the constraints of the resources available).
This could potentially be split into two research projects – one to assess CDVC’s services and one to assess the impact of volunteering in the district.
Opportunity number: 38
