This is not the post that we sat down to plan a few weeks ago. We had planned to spell out the background behind the Goldstar Project and all they had to share with respect to

…identifying the barriers to recruiting volunteers from socially excluded groups and offered ways to overcoming them.

Sadly, during the last minute checks for spelling and broken links we discovered that the project website was down. We’ve held off until now in hopes that it was just a minor technical glitch or that someone had just forgotten to pay the hosting bill but nothing has changed and our enquiries have so far gone unanswered.

We knew that the programme itself had been wound up in March 2009 after more than three years of encouraging best practice in supported volunteering but it had seemed as if the site would be left up as an ongoing resource making their learning available to for everyone to see. But, alas, that no longer seems to be the case. If anyone reading this has some insider knowledge then please feel free to bring us up to speed on the situation – it was a good resource and it’s a shame to see it disappear.

Fortunately we had managed to gather some of that knowledge before the vanishing act and while we wait to learn if that info will be made available elsewhere we can share a bit of it here. We can loosely break this down into two sets: published reports and the Practice Toolkit that was contained on the website.

These are electronic versions (.pdf) of four Goldstar publications that have been generally available for some time now but are worth looking at for those thinking of reviewing or launching a supported volunteering initiative:

• Good Practice Handbook
• Impact Assesment Guide
• Beyond Dissemination
• Success Stories – What Can Volunteering Lead To

We’ll be taking a closer look at each of these as time goes by but wanted to make them available here in light of the events above.

The online Practice Toolkit was a useful collection of example documents and case studies taken from the work of the 46 Goldstar projects. We will be trying to find out if it will be possible to access those materials elsewhere or may even offer to host them here but we did make note of the outline of the Toolkit and have included it below. Though on the surface it may differ from the structure we will be exploring on 6 May we think it does make useful reading and helps break a big task down into manageable bites.

Outline of the Goldstar Practice Toolkit

• Recruitment & Selection
  • Providing appropriate information to prospective volunteers
  • Supporting Volunteers at the recruitment stage
  • Recruiting Service Users
  • Ensuring Selection Procedures are effective
• Inductions & Training
  • Tailoring Training to Individuals
  • Matching Volunteers to Roles
  • Induction Training
  • Training Activities
  • General
• Support & Supervision
  • Assessing Support Needs
  • Peer and Mentor Support
  • Monitoring Volunteer Progression
  • General
• Progression Pathways
  • Developing Clear Pathways to Progression
  • Other
• Involvement & Recognition
  • General
• Effective Management
  • Policies & Procedures
  • Measuring Impact
  • Management Information and Records of Volunteers
  • Quality Standards
  • Working with Clients