Voluntary Action looks back over year of successes

Saying thank you to the team of volunteers

The gathering followed Voluntary Action Arun and Chichester’s annual meeting, held at Littlehampton Girlguiding Centre and attended by 45 people.

They celebrated a great year supporting the 323 members and shared some highlights from the annual report.

These included 636 volunteers recruited through the Volunteer Now! service to support local voluntary and community groups.

Sharon Westcott, office and communication manager, said: “If each volunteer recruited did an average of two hours’ volunteering a week, we estimate the monetary value of all this volunteering as £429,936 in the last year.”

There was also the launch of two new networks, a volunteer co-ordinator and fundraising network – to help and train staff and volunteers in local organisations and provide peer support.

One-to-one assistance was offered to 117 organisations, covering a variety of topics including fundraising, policies and procedures, planning and strategy writing, volunteer recruitment and starting up an organisation.

The website saw 2,000 unique visitors and 650 people received the weekly email bulletin. Both contain information on training courses, events, funding streams, changes in legislation and information about local partnerships.

Hilary Spencer, chief executive, reflected: “The 2014-2015 year has been another successful year for VAAC.

“We always strive to learn both from the work we do and from talking to and listening to our members.

“As a result, we have set up a number of new services this year, including a fundraiser network, the Funding Focus newsletter and the volunteer co-ordinator network, and have promoted volunteering at more events and venues than ever before.”

Visit www.do-it.org or call 01243 864220 to find out more.

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