Volunteer Recruitment (outside Uganda)

Open positions

Whisper’s current list of available volunteer positions is here: https://www.charityjob.co.uk/volunteer-jobs?keywords=Whisper

How to recruit a volunteer

When you need a new volunteer, you should fill in a volunteer specification.

A programme of work should be organised (for example, a copywriting brief prepared) for the volunteer before the recruitment ad is posted, so that they can start work straight away.

It’s important to choose a volunteer who can do the job. While it may be tempting to choose somebody just because they’re keen and available, it’s not fair on Whisper’s beneficiaries to take on somebody unsuitable, and the volunteer may be disappointed when they realise that they’re not right for the job and you have to replace them.

For some roles, volunteers should ideally have relevant commercial or charity experience. As a small charity with very stretched volunteers, Whisper should consider whether it has the management time to take on trainees.

Preference should normally be given to volunteers with previous experience of volunteering. First-time volunteers may not like the reality of volunteering as much as they like the idea.

Consider a trial period of 2-3 weeks, during which they will need to complete an agreed task. If the trial period is not successful then the volunteer should normally be replaced.

Volunteers are normally recruited on https://www.charityjob.co.uk which has by far the highest number of visitors of the charity recruitment websites. The number of positions posted is also very high, so for priority roles it’s best to pay for a listing rather than just using the free service. The site attracts many applications from abroad, and for some positions these are unsuitable.

Local volunteering sites may also work quite well, for example the local volunteering board in Bath is here and the London board is here. Both sites require all recruiters to have insurance to cover their volunteers.

Less effective volunteer recruitment sites

We’ve tried other websites such as those in the list below, but we’ve found that they don’t get enough web traffic to be worthwhile. Any website that shows under 7500 estimated unique visitors a month on https://similarweb.com is probably not worthwhile unless it’s a very specialist site. Also, https://www.doit.life seems to focus on employer-sponsored volunteers, who may be too short-term for Whisper.

https:*www.it4communities.org.uk\ https:*www.reachskills.org.uk\ https://www.doit.life