To kick off Volunteers' Week 2025, here's a list of some fab free resources for charities, community groups and social enterprises across Gloucestershire.

You can also find out more about how to join in this years' celebrations - even if you're on a tight budget!

Printables, certificates and more

• Volunteers' Week Resources page - this is a hub of useful resources and free templates that you can use to thank your volunteers this year. It also contains some fantastic social media graphics that you can use across your communications.

Recruiting, managing and supporting volunteers

• Go Volunteer Glos website - if you're looking for a volunteer opportunity or have a volunteer vacancy that you'd like to advertise, head over to the home of volunteering in Gloucestershire. You can upload your volunteer vacancies for free and access a range of support from our Go Volunteer Glos team.
• Free Employer Supported Volunteering (ESV) guide and resources - this is a great resource which includes a comprehensive guide, toolkit and case studies to support your organisation with all things ESV.
• Bitesize Volunteering - Community Impact Bucks put together this useful guide about bitesize volunteering for organisations looking to find out more about how to get started with this different approach to volunteering.
• Charity Digital: How to write a volunteer handbook - in this useful article Charity Digital outlines the key steps to writing an effective volunteer handbook.
• Just One Thing Podcast - listen to the late Michael Mosley explore how volunteering could lower your cholesterol and help you stay healthy for longer.
• Investing In Volunteers (IiV) Essentials - IiV Essentials is a free online tool designed especially for volunteer-involving groups and organisations.
• Vision for Volunteering toolkit - this toolkit was developed to "help you start conversations with those in your organisation, group or community about the Vision for Volunteering and what this could mean for you".

Recruiting, managing and supporting trustees

• Free-to-stream trustee training - as part of our Trustee Bank programme we developed a suite of free training for charity trustees in Gloucestershire. You can also find some great social media training videos on our website too!
• Go Volunteer Glos website - if you're looking for a trusteeship or have a trustee vacancy that you'd like to advertise, head over to the home of volunteering in Gloucestershire. You can upload your trustee vacancies for free and access a range of support from our Go Volunteer Glos team.
• Finding and appointing new trustees (CC30) - this guide from GOV.UK was recently updated and will help you to "think broadly about who could be a trustee of your charity, and how to reach them" and "understand if you can improve the way you recruit new trustees".
• Trustees unlimited - this trustee matching service (‘SNAP’) "enables you to advertise your role and discover diverse talent for your charity board straight to your inbox!".
• Understanding trustee recruitment and retention challenges - this report contains the survey findings from the Trustees Unlimited 2024 voluntary sector survey.
• Trustee recruitment pack for small organisations - this resource has been created by NCVO for smaller organisations looking for trustees.
• Charity trustee welcome pack - this is another useful guide from GOV.UK and is designed to help trustees navigate their first few months, as well as including a range of information about what it means to be a trustee.
• Charity Trustee Recruitment - How To Find Trustees - this useful article from Charity Excellence contains "everything you need, including organisations who will help you in recruiting trustees for your charity, for free".

Looking for more free resources and toolkits? Visit our resources page: VCSE Sector Resources

About Volunteers' Week

Volunteers’ Week is campaign that runs throughout the UK during the first week of June each year. It's a time when organisations are encouraged to celebrate the contributions of their volunteers (including your trustees of course!). Volunteers' Week has been running for over 40 years and is a really great campaign to utilise if you'd like to thank current and past volunteers for their much-valued time, commitment and dedication to your organisation.

Get involved

Each year, our team love seeing the range of stories and celebrations shared by local charities and community groups in Gloucestershire. We encourage as many local organisations to get involved as possible, in their own unique way, so that we can all come together and celebrate volunteering in our county.

Here's a few ideas about what you could do, to get involved this year:

1. Send your volunteers a thank you card to show them how much their support means to your organisation - you can send an e-card or one in the post, it's up to you.

2. Share your volunteer stories on your website, in your newsletter or on your social media - not only do volunteer stories help recognise your current volunteers, they may also attract new volunteers to your organisation.

3. Organise a coffee morning or brunch for your volunteers to connect with each other and your team - from coffee and croissants to afternoon tea, there are lots of ways that you can bring people together to celebrate. You could even ask your team to do a 'bring and share' lunch or to bake some cakes to share.

Whatever you plans are – big or small – we'd be happy to share your posts on our social media or share your stories next week. You can share your stories and information about your celebrations by:

• Tagging us in on your posts on X and Facebook - we're @GlosVCSAlliance on both.

• Sending us the weblink to your volunteer stories This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to share in our News Bulletin and on our social media.

Our team will be sharing links to free resources, stories from the sector and more next week. Please follow us on X and Facebook (we're @GlosVCSAlliance on both) or sign up to our News Bulletin to keep updated. 

We're also hosting the 2025 Gloucestershire's Volunteer Awards on Thursday 5 June. You can find out more about this year's finalists on the Go Volunteer Glos website. Bookings for this year's celebrations have now closed, but we will be sharing photos and stories from the evening after the event across our communications.

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We share regular news updates and information for the VCSE Sector in Gloucestershire in our News Bulletin. If you're not on the mailing list yet, please sign up using our webform.

Support for the VCSE sector in Gloucestershire

We provide a range of support for VCSE sector groups & organisations of all shapes and sizes in Gloucestershire, including fully funded training & events, a range of thematic mailings, regular news updates, free membership and help recruiting volunteers.

We are the independent voice of the VCSE sector in Gloucestershire and are passionate about promoting equal partnerships at every level. You can find out more about how we work in partnership and represent the sector on our About Us page.