Bristol City Council has launched a major Survey to ask the Voluntary and Community Sector about their support needs. http://www.bristol.gov.uk/vcssurvey  More details on Information for Organisations page

New posts at Volunteering Bristol will help  Charities' Volunteer Managers.
Volunteering Bristol has been awarded a significant grant from the Big Lottery Fund specifically to give direct support to volunteer managers and organisers working for voluntary organisations in Bristol.  A Volunteer Support Co-ordinator and an administrative assistant will be employed on the project to help improve the ability of volunteering-involving organisations to recruit, train and retain their volunteers, and to provide guidance, training and resources to groups in Bristol to improve their management of volunteers.
The new resources and support will provide structured programmes of training, to be delivered in partnership with Voscur’s training unit, on a wide range of subjects of particular interest and relevance to volunteer managers.  The Big Lottery funding will be used to subsidise the training costs so that even the smallest voluntary or community group that uses volunteers may attend.

Apart from the expanded training programme, we will be also looking to identify gaps in standards, and will offer support to organisations who need extra help with volunteer recruitment and management processes.  In particular we will be working with self-help groups dependent on volunteers for their day-to-day operations, helping them to establish basic policies of good governance and volunteer management.

More established and larger groups who have some or most of their good-practice volunteer management policies and procedures in place will be helped to achieve quality and accreditation standards.

The overall project will work through the Volunteer Organisers Forum to share information and help resolve problems.

Volunteering Bristol's Annual Review for 2007/08 is now available to download.