Still Reaping the Benefits: Solidarity Sports on Skilled Volunteering

Impact Story by Skilled Volunteer | Nada Savitch

A single Link UP London volunteer gave just 24 hours of her time last year – and Solidarity Sports is still feeling the benefit, months on.

Long-lasting impact

Link UP London’s volunteering projects are time-limited, but their impact lasts.

This is certainly the experience of Joanna from Solidarity Sports. A Link UP volunteer, Kay gave 24 hours of her time over 3-4 months last year but she is still having an impact on the charity and Joanna.

“We are still reaping the benefits – months afterwards”

Joanna knows the value of volunteering. Her role is to recruit, onboard and support over 300 volunteers for the West London charity Solidarity Sports.

Solidarity Sports provides holistic care for children experiencing complex trauma, often associated with domestic or sexual abuse. Through provision of sports activities, their programmes support recovery for children experiencing depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, or self-harm. In the school holidays they run activities for 6 hours a day for 5-12 year olds; providing respite for parents and carers.

Solidarity Sports didn’t have any problem recruiting volunteers through local universities and businesses. But they realised that they needed some advice and experience to enable them to build long term partnerships with businesses and to ensure that their corporate volunteers return. They turned to Link UP London.

In line with the way Link UP London works, the Volunteer, Kay came with the right experience, heaps of commitment and the ability to challenge without judgement.

She helped Joanna in four key ways that have had a massive impact on the charity:

“Kay opened my mind to the business side of a charity”

Starting the relationship well with good information

Joanna had an existing pack of information that she provided to potential corporate partners. Kay helped to amend the pack making it shorter, easier to read. Instead of trying to provide all the answers, it provided a clear way of getting in touch with Joanna for more information. Joanna says she’s had 3-4 new corporates join the charity this summer on the back of starting relationships in this way.

Developing the website

“Even after the volunteering project stopped, I’ve used her ideas to keep improving my work”

Kay encouraged Joanna to think about the information on the website for corporates. When the website was redesigned, Joanna felt confident to push for a new section. The result was ‘Corporate Corner’ – a dedicated space for corporates, with an enquiry form and phone number to contact Joanna.

Getting useful feedback

All charities understand the need to learn from what they are doing. Kay also revolutionised the feedback survey for volunteers by encouraging Joanna to move away from questions asking for long text answers that were difficult to complete and difficult for Joanna to analyse. Kay suggested offering tick-box options and asking for just three words to describe their experiences. Not only did the redesigned survey have a much-improved response rate, Joanna found that the three-word responses were really helpful to describe volunteering at Solidarity Sports to funders.

Covering the costs of volunteer management

Volunteering is important to charities, but as Link UP London demonstrates, volunteering is good for the individual volunteer and for their employers. However, supporting volunteers can be costly. Kay encouraged Joanna to think about all the costs involved in onboarding and supporting volunteers – especially Joanna’s time.

“She made me do my homework!”

Joanna now feels empowered to ask employers to cover the costs, either per volunteer or as part of a larger partnership package. This has created an extra income stream for the charity.
Joanna’s manager had initially applied to Link UP London and Joanna forgot all about it. It took a few months for the right match but Joanna says it was definitely worth the wait as the impact keeps coming.

The bigger picture

Kay’s support helped the charity sharpen its corporate partner pack (bringing in 4 new corporate partners this summer), launch a dedicated “Corporate Corner” on its website, redesign its volunteer feedback survey for better response rates and more useful insights, and build the confidence to ask employers to cover volunteering costs – opening up a new income stream. It’s a clear example of how short-term, skilled volunteering can keep paying off long after the project ends.

If your charity needs some skilled support, get in touch with Link UP London.