Volunteers' Week 2010

Inspiring and Celebrating

Volunteers' week newsletter

Volunteers’ Week is an annual event which celebrates the fantastic contribution that millions of volunteers make across the UK. The Week plays a huge part in raising the profile of the millions of volunteers who regularly contribute to society, while inspiring others to get involved too.

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Welcome

In this edition we begin the countdown to the 1st June with ideas and resources to make the most of the week and your involvement.

http://www.volunteersweek.org.uk

Maximise the impact of your event with branded merchandise

We have sourced a range of merchandise items including some new items for this year. The branding is not specific to 2010 so you will be able to reuse these items again next year.

Last year some items sold out early so we have adjusted stock but you might like to make a note to get your order in sooner rather than later. 
Popular items last year were trolley coins, stickers, pens and sweets, with banners, t-shirts and balloons following closely. To view all available items in the shop click here: https://ecommerce.volunteering.org.uk/volunteersweek/vwmerchandise.aspx – and remember Volunteering England Members get an automatic 10% discount.

Thank you messages on the home page

New this year, the rolling thank you banner on the home page has proved very popular with those wanting to thank their volunteers. Thank you messages can be seen scrolling across the main page which then links by a single click to a more detailed message. Your thank you can be to all of your volunteers or to one individual in particular. Here’s an example from our site:

Thanks for the hard work, passion and enthusiasm.

Community Action Volunteers
Derby

Thanks for the hard work, passion and enthusiasm. You enable us to do so much more than we could ever do without you. It is appreciated.:
To send your own message of thanks, use the link below:
http://www.volunteersweek.org.uk/Celebrating+volunteering/Thank+you/say-thank-you.htm

Free downloadable promotional items

Posters, certificates and flyers are available free of charge from the website to help promote your event.

Demand has meant that the flyers have had to be reordered as they were temporarily out of stock. These are now available and any back orders you have placed will arrive with you shortly.

Media pack now available

Volunteering England has today issued a media pack with details of:

• The reasons and aims behind the week
• Inspiring real life stories celebrating volunteering
• Volunteers’ Week merchandise
• How to get involved with the week
• How to get hold of free Volunteers’ Week resources

The pack is also  available to download from the Volunteering England website www.volunteering.org.uk

For more information about the week please contact Kimberley Rowley on 0207 520 8932 or email kimberley.rowley@volunteeringengland.org

Campaign partners

Volunteers’ Week is designed for everyone involved in volunteering; volunteers themselves certainly, but also the many organisations that work with them.  We are delighted that a great number of organisations have shown their support of this campaign by signing up as partners. These include England and Wales Cricket Board, National Trust, RSPB, Samaritans, Sue Ryder and Voluntary Arts England.  

Details of our partners’ work and case studies can be found in full on the Voulnteers’ Week website.

“73% of the partners say they had benefited from being involved, with all saying they would do so again”

If would like to know more about becoming a partner please contact: Katy Chason on:0207 520 8923  or at: katy.chason@volunteeringengland.co.uk

Tweet Volunteers Week

For those of you who enjoy following Volunteering England on twitter, you’ll be please to know that we have a dedicated twitter account for Volunteers Week. To sign up you’ll need to register at twitter.com/volunteersweek.

If you have an event coming up or know of an event to mark Volunteers’ Week, tweet us with information and we can share it.

An initiative of Volunteering England, Wales Council for Voluntary Action, Volunteer Development Agency (Northern Ireland) and Volunteer Development Scotland, the week will focus on rewarding, recognising and recruiting volunteers.