Association of Volunteer Managers knows that in order to offer and enable meaningful and effective volunteering interventions, organisations need to have well supported individuals who feel confident and comfortable at involving people who want to give their time

We will work with our members to better support the development of these skills of collaborating and working together with volunteers and communities wherever they are and however they want to be involved.

We will do this by ensuring that our members are genuinely included and leading the conversations about what they need in order to achieve the vision in their own practice.

We recognise that those who involve volunteers want the varied skills needed for this role to be understood and shared so we pledge to develop and implement an accreditation system to raise the profile of those who deliver volunteer management within their organisations

We have already started on the road of being less London-centric and are committed to seeing this grow as we develop regional led groups and opportunities across the UK. This will ensure greater flexibility, co-operation and encouragement to experiment and share learning.

NAVCA will support its members to develop strong local ecosystems for volunteering so that everyone can volunteer in ways that are meaningful to them. This means that by 2032 we have helped our members reach into all communities in their patch with opportunities for all types of volunteering.

NAVCA will help to make sure that local good quality support is clearly signposted and readily available for people wanting to volunteer and organisations wanting to involve volunteers. By 2032 we commit to implementing and continually improving the Volunteer Centre Quality Accreditation as the gold standard of recognition for local volunteer centres delivering excellent volunteering brokerage, opportunities and best practice.

We will know that we have succeeded in connecting people into their communities through volunteering because we will instigate a collaboration of interested organisations to quantify the impact and importance of local volunteering, in all its different forms. By 2032 these new metrics will help the impact of volunteering in all forms be more widely acknowledged and appreciated.

NCVO will champion volunteering in all our work. We will work to improve equity and inclusion in volunteering, through understanding, reducing and removing the barriers which can stop us from giving our time and energy.

NCVO will develop and support campaigns to build awareness and appreciation of the positive impact that volunteers have on our society and economy. We will continue to champion Trustees Week, and we will help to support the Volunteers Week campaign.

NCVO will collaborate with our members, volunteering networks, infrastructure bodies and volunteer involving organisations. We will build and support volunteering networks, bringing together volunteer involving organisations and volunteering infrastructure. We will create opportunities for our members and networks to come together, to share expertise and build shared solutions to challenges for volunteering. We will also work to connect with public and private sector around involving volunteers and supporting staff to volunteer.

We will conduct research including in our Time Well Spent series, focused research on disabled volunteers’ experiences and Road Ahead publications. We will use this evidence to inform our work, and share our research findings in accessible ways to support organisations to make real improvements in volunteering.

NCVO will work with government and key decision makers, to influence decisions which affect the volunteering environment. We will work collaboratively with the Civil Society Group, the Shaping The Future With Volunteering group and other organisations to ensure we build a consistent message and approach. We will engage our members, sharing our power in providing a platform for volunteering organisations to influence change, and amplify their voices to improve volunteering.

We will monitor legal, regulatory, social and economic changes and the context of our daily lives relating to volunteering. We will maintain, update and create practical resources and guidance for organisations involving volunteers.

NCVO will deliver training to support volunteer involving organisations to create inclusive, accessible and impactful volunteering roles and opportunities. Our team of consultants will deliver projects and programmes on volunteering, including one on age friendly inclusive volunteering.

We will work with partners across the voluntary sector to champion and support trustees of charities, and to drive improvements in governance. We will provide tools, learning and development and networking opportunities, and work to ensure the practice set out in the Charity Governance Code remains relevant and is widely adopted. We will support organisations to reduce and remove barriers to becoming a trustee and to improve the effectiveness of charity boards.

We will recognise that all volunteers have great power.

In the places we operate, we will enable all parts of the community, especially those that experience intersectional barriers to participation, to have the opportunity to volunteer. We will do this by promoting, platforming and instigating collaboration and experimentation by volunteers, to understand their power, and to use it to change places and systems.

Equity, diversity and inclusion will be front and centre of what we do. We will proactively ensure that our volunteers are representative of the communities we work in and that all of our volunteering opportunities are truly inclusive. We will Equality Impact Assess all our volunteering opportunities to maximise the number of communities that can experience the power of volunteering.

We will offer our buildings to be owned by communities as safe spaces to collaborate, experiment, and create change through social action volunteering.

We will invest in understanding the impact of the power of volunteering on places and how this can change the way funding reaches communities. We will invest in a policy brief centred on creation of policy from communities directly and will platform this to decision makers so that national and local policy affecting communities does not reinforce structural inequalities.

We will build greater awareness and recognition of the power of volunteering on places, by adapting our corporate voice to be the direct voices of our volunteers, communicating their impact through our website and social media.

We will continue to invest in the #iwill movement alongside #iwill Ambassadors, UK Youth and our Nation Partners to establish the recognition that young people that are creating youth social action in their communities are part of the volunteering community and have the power and right to be seen as part of the infrastructure of the UK.