Reflections from 2024/25

What’s new?

Volunteer engagement survey 

Thanks for the great response to this survey back in June 2024. It’s given us invaluable insight into our volunteer experience and is being used to inform our key priorities in our new five-year Volunteering Strategic Plan so we can make the biggest impact.

Events 

Connection was a key theme in your volunteer survey so we’ve been looking at ways that we can connect volunteers with each other, as well as feeling more connected to the Society. Our Local Community and Volunteering Leads (LCVLs) hosted volunteer engagement events in five regions over the year (from April 2024 to end of March 2025). The events were attended by a mix of volunteers and employees who came together to hear updates and share feedback with one another. The events were a great success so look out for more coming up in the next few months.

Future of volunteering sessions

258 volunteers and employees joined us for 16 workshops to feed in ideas and experiences on their vision for volunteering at Alzheimer’s Society. We also held six bespoke sessions with Dementia Voice Partners on the theme of ‘giving time’. A huge thank you to everyone who took the time to attend and contribute.

Branded clothing for volunteers 

You may have seen photos of some of our volunteers wearing their new branded clothing recently. We wanted to make sure you feel a valued member of the team at Alzheimer’s Society, particularly when out representing us in your local communities, so we’re now offering branded polo shirts and sweatshirts. You can order them through your Volunteer Role Manager - just let them know your size and delivery address.

Volunteer portal

We've moved our Volunteer Portal to this new site. Please save this link as we’ll be phasing out the old site. The portal is a 'one-stop' shop for all your volunteers' needs, from e-learning to policies and tech support. There’s a new section on wellbeing advice and support, including details of our revamped volunteer wellbeing offer and Bupa 24/7 helpline as well as online self-help tools.

Learning 

We’re continuing to improve our volunteer learning offer, which was another piece of feedback in the survey. Feedback from the new Learning and Development Volunteer working group has given us insights around the experience of completing our learning. We’re now offering more formats, which definitely contributed to an excellent completion rate of 94% for the data protection learning. Thank you to everyone who completed it and those who supported through the learning.
 

Looking ahead

Volunteering strategic plan 

We’re in the final stages of developing our Volunteering Strategic Plan which will outline our vision for volunteering at Alzheimer’s Society over the next five years. We’re currently testing our first draft with key stakeholders and look forward to sharing the final product with you in June.

EDIB (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging) 

It’s so important that volunteering with us is accessible and supportive for everyone. We know there’s further work to do to attract, welcome and support a diverse base of volunteers, ensuring we’re reflecting the communities in which people can volunteer and access our services. We’ll be focussing on gathering insight through the creation of a new working group of volunteers focussed on this topic – watch this space for further information.

Journey / experience improvements 

We’re always looking at the process, systems and support we give to volunteers and volunteer managers, to make the experience better and easier for everyone. We’re currently working on a number of areas including volunteer recruitment, ID badges, learning, IT/systems, recognition and wellbeing.