New online course to support third-sector workers with managing volunteers

The CMI Level 3 Award in Managing Volunteers aims to equip managers with the knowledge to support volunteers to be effective within their role.

Managers across the third-sector can now gain the skills to effectively manage, motivate and retain volunteers through an official qualification from the Chartered Management Institute (CMI).

According to the latest figures from the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, there are around 14 million formal volunteers in the UK, while research from Works4U shows that volunteering in England and Wales is worth £324bn a year.

Volunteers are uniquely placed to offer a wealth of skills and abilities to complement those of employed staff within an organisation, but the charity sector continues to struggle with high turnover of volunteers, as ever increasing demands lead to poor wellbeing and burnout.

Endorsed by the Greater Manchester Volunteering Network (GMYN), the CMI Level 3 Award in Managing Volunteers is a five-week, online course that aims to equip managers with the knowledge to support volunteers to be effective within their role, and address any challenges with a positive, ‘can-do’ attitude.

Myrtle Finley, Training and Development Manager at GMYN, recently completed the course. She said:

“The Managing Volunteers course has helped me to make sure that the experience of volunteers is a quality experience, and that we can reach those that may not have had positive volunteer experiences before and improve that through their experience with us.

“I would recommend the course to those in the charity sector because it gave us a good grounding of all volunteer management needs and considerations, and I think it has put us in good stead to apply that in our work going forward.”

Upon completion of the course, learners will also understand the legal and organisational requirements for managing volunteers, and know how to recruit, select and manage learning and development for volunteers.

The course is delivered by trusted provider MOL through their innovative Virtual Learning Environment. Learners will benefit from live virtual classes, learning journeys for guided reading, and interactive activities to assess progress and stay on track. The Live Online delivery method also allows learners to fit the course around their personal life and work commitments.

Alex Fairweather, Chief Executive of GMYN, said:

“My team’s learning experience has been great. They found the module interesting. They found the interface accessible. They found the course is just right for them with regards to level of understanding and how they can fit it around their own work.

“We chose to work with MOL because we have the same sort of ethics with regard to how they run their organisation, and how I run GMYN. It seemed a natural synergy for our two organisations to work on producing this module, and then giving it out to the sector.

“Volunteers are not paid, they are doing it off their own goodwill, so we need to make sure they feel part of our organisation and that our staff have got the ability to make sure they’re part of our team.”

The Managing Volunteers award is a single award unit from the CMI Level 3 Diploma in Principles of Management and Leadership and costs £395 to complete. With cohorts starting throughout March, you can find out more on the MOL website.