GLV: Using Do-it's tips for writing opportunities

Lianna from Greater London Volunteering (GLV) was looking for a volunteer to help run its events calendar. Heres how she used the Do-it guide to writing opportunities to find the right person.

“GLV operates an events calendar that highlights volunteering events all over London. These range from river clean-ups to marathon stewarding to tree planting. We used Do-it to advertise for a volunteer who’d be able to help us update the calendar, and promote it to organisations seeking volunteers to help at their events.

Do-It provides some excellent guidance on writing volunteering opportunities. I used the guidance to rewrite an old description of the volunteering role, emphasising the skills that a volunteer would gain and the wide variety of tasks involved. The new role description was simple and easy to understand, and also explained how the events calendar works.

I highlighted how a volunteer could use the experience of volunteering to polish research and marketing skills, and gain a better knowledge of the London voluntary sector. Finally, as many people volunteer because they want to ‘make a difference’ it was important to show that managing the events calendar provides real satisfaction in linking up potential volunteers to opportunities they can enjoy, as well as making a huge difference to charities that need a helping hand from enthusiastic people.

Rewriting the volunteer description to highlight the rewards the volunteer would gain from the role certainly paid off. GLV received several excellent applications from volunteers.”