Explore practical tools, tips, and guides designed to help your organisation recruit, support, and manage volunteers with confidence. Browse the sections below to find exactly what you need.
How to make sure your organisation is ready to welcome and support volunteers.
Before you engage volunteers you need to ensure that you have solid policies, systems and processes in place to protect your organisation, the people you serve and your volunteers. A lack of good policies can result in poor practices, and have a detrimental effect on your organisation and its reputation.
Learn how to attract volunteers and effectively manage the recruitment process.
Writing an appealing volunteer advertisement is not as simple as it may seem at first. The following tips may help you find the best volunteer for the role…
This is a useful resource full of great tips – compiled by the collective of Volunteer Centres in New Zealand.
Finding the right volunteers for your organisation involves ensuring that you are getting an effective message, and the right message, to the right audience…
When recruiting volunteers, there are a range of checks you can undertake to ensure you are getting the right person for the role, the right person for your organisation, and the right person to work with your clients…
When recruiting volunteers, reference checks are an important part of the process. These checks allow you to build a picture of the prospective volunteer and help to ensure that you are getting a good fit for your team…
The purpose of vetting is to minimise the likelihood of the more vulnerable members of society, eg children, older people and those with disabilities, being put at risk by individuals who may have displayed behaviour that could be detrimental to others safety and wellbeing…
The key to matching volunteers to roles is understanding the specific requirements of the role AND the volunteer’s motivation…
The Human Rights Act protects people from unlawful discrimination. The Act’s intention is to ensure that everyone is treated fairly in key areas of life, including employment, and this includes the recruitment of volunteers…
Best-practice advice for welcoming, motivating and retaining volunteers.
Developing your Volunteer Programme – a guide for managers of volunteers. This highly recommended resource was developed by Volunteer Wellington and contains practical tips, tools and resources to help organisations develop their volunteer programmes.
Volunteering Waikato encourages best practice in volunteer management. This check-list will help you to assess your current processes and assist you to identify areas for the further development of your volunteer programme.
Retaining volunteers is important to ensure the continuation and consistency of the services you provide. Volunteers gain a lot of organisational knowledge during their time in your organisation – when they leave, they take that knowledge and experience with them. If you consider the time and processes you have gone through to recruit a volunteer – you will definitely want some return on that investment.
There are many reasons that your organisation may need to exit a volunteer. Perhaps they are no longer able to perform the role, cannot safely complete the required tasks, or are not aligned with the values or vision of the organisation. Exiting a volunteer is sometimes necessary, but not always an easy process…
Volunteer teams benefit by being diverse and involving a wide range of volunteers, and this may include those with a disability or impairment. Whether you are considering involving a volunteer with an intellectual disability, sight or hearing impairment, someone recovering from an illness, or with a mobility issue etc, this resource contains some helpful considerations…
Looking for new ways that volunteers can support the aims of your organisation? Our friends at Exult have produced this list of 99 volunteer roles that you might not have thought of…
Helpful guidance to create a safe, compliant and welcoming environment for all volunteers.
Volunteering Waikato encourages community organisations to reimburse the actual expenses, eg travel, of your volunteers… but make sure you know the IRD rules regarding reimbursement…
The primary piece of legislation that governs health and safety in New Zealand is the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSWA). This fact sheet explains the health and safety duties of a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) that engages volunteers.
These forms and templates are examples that your organisation may find useful for volunteer recruitment and management. You are welcome to use or adapt these in any way you choose!
This template is to assist you to in writing a volunteer role description. It contains a range of considerations, which may or may not be applicable in different situations.
Do your volunteers have role descriptions? Role descriptions are just as important for volunteers as they are for paid staff. This is an example of a basic volunteer role description.
Getting your potential volunteers to complete an application form is a great way to ensure you have the basic information that you may need. This is an example of a basic application form.
Do you have a written agreement or contract between your organisation and your volunteers? This is an example of a volunteer agreement.
A Code of Ethics and/or Code of Conduct gives you the opportunity to define the expectations you have of your volunteers. Volunteers need to clearly understand the standards you expect of them, and what the consequences are if these are not met. This example provides suggestions that can be used to customise a code to meet the needs of your volunteer team and organisation.
When volunteers leave your organisation, do you seek feedback from them? This can be a valuable way of gaining information for the continued improvement of your volunteer programme.
Additional tools, guides, and links to help with all aspects of volunteer management and community engagement.
The national voice supporting and inspiring effective volunteering across Aotearoa New Zealand.
Strengthening Waikato’s community sector with advice, training, funding, and advocacy support.
A global network connecting volunteer leaders to share and grow volunteering impact.
An easy-to-use platform for listing and finding volunteer roles across New Zealand.
Get the best results from our recruitment tools with easy guides for members.
This fact sheet gives Member Organisations the steps to using the basic functions of managing your positions and volunteers on Volunteering Waikato’s website.
This is a step by step guide to using Volunteering Waikato’s website – from logging in, listing new roles, updating them, and managing volunteering referrals…
Here’s a guide on how to write a role, and what information to include, for any role you post to our website through your member login.