My top 3 volunteering tips

It is the last day of Volunteers' Week and I hope you have been as inspired as I have by the amazing content that's been everywhere on social media this week. As a volunteer at three different organisations, I thought I would share my own top three tips for volunteering.

#1 - follow your heart (but don't forget to bring your head with you!)

You need to follow your heart when considering volunteering. I have an emotional connection to all three of the organisations that I help. I am a volunteer CV reviewer for the Young Women's Trust, an organisation whose values resonate with my own, and with my personal early career experiences. In one of my first jobs after leaving school after A-levels, my then boss offered to review my CV for me and also took the time to help me plot the beginnings of a career path. That good advice really helped orientate me at a time when I didn't really know what I wanted to do, and it helped me to find my purpose. The rest, as they say, is history.

Economic empowerment, equality and social mobility have always mattered but they have never been more important than they are now, in the midst of a cost of living crisis that is threatening to undo decades of progress for young women especially. My contribution - reviewing two CVs per months for young women seeking advice and guidance - is miniscule in comparison to the scale of these challenges, but there is strength in numbers and I feel more positive knowing that I am part of an organisation that is passionate about addressing these.

#2 - be open to going outside your comfort zone

I also volunteer as a 'lay reviewer' for Pancreatic Cancer UK, which means that from time to time I get to review applications for medical research funding and to provide feedback from the patient / family viewpoint. In August 2021 I lost my dad to pancreatic cancer, just seven weeks after his diagnosis. Reviewing these often complex treatment and diagnostic developments has helped me start to make some sense of my dad's death, and to 'unpack' and understand some of the aspects of the disease that we as a family didn't get time to discuss in any depth with medical professionals.

Spending time delving deeper into the reasons why PC is such a dreadful disease - and how it could be tackled in different ways - has been painful at times but it gives me optimism for the future, and if it can help other families and people with PC then it is ultimately time very well spent.

#3 - stay coachable & 'manageable'

Managing volunteers takes time and resource for charities. It is important to make sure that you, as a volunteer, are doing everything you can to be coachable and make the job of managing you, as smooth and effective as possible. Be honest with yourself and your chosen charity or organisation on exactly how much time you can commit to volunteering. Be a self-starter when it comes to reading up on related subjects and doing your own homework on the organisation and your role. I am a parent governor at my son's school and will readily admit that I have had a lot of reading and training to do on becoming an effective governor: school governance and finance is complex, there is a lot of jargon, and (with this kind of volunteering role, but not all) there are legal responsibilities that come with the territory that you have to be fully cognisant of. It is so worthwhile though and I do understand our school, the UK's education system and its challenges (including but most definitely not only COVID-19) so much better now. I can confidently say that the perspective as a governor is very different to that of a parent, or even as the daughter of a primary school teacher.

There are many more things I could say about volunteering - oh for the time and the space! - but I'd be more interested to hear others' views so please feel free to comment.