Promoting Volunteer Roles

Upcoming deadlines:

Deadline to get information in for the April newsletter: Monday 25th March, please let me know if there are any relevant days e.g. Autism Awarenress month that link to your role and story.

Promoting your opportunities

 Once your role is live on Simply Connect, we have several ways we can promote your roles:

  • In our Volunteering Opportunities Newsletter
  • As a Volunteer Story of the Month feature
  • Our bigger promotions
  • Public events
  • Volunteer Advisors
  • Social Media sharing

Please read on for more information.

Our Volunteering Opportunities Newsletter

To complement listing your roles on Simply Connect, we also produce a regular e-newsletter which goes to around 4,500 local individuals who have expressed an interest in volunteering and have subscribed to receive the e-newsletter.

See past examples here.

The primary purpose of this e-newsletter is to promote your volunteering roles and  your volunteering information events.

Typically, we send at least one e-newsletter to this database every month. Often it is a general round of the latest roles. However, we also produce 'themed' e-newsletters which might tie in with topical events such as e.g.  Mental Health Awareness Week etc - with relevant roles included, whether they are recently created or long-standing.

We will always put a call out for your roles through our monthly round up organisations newsletter including the deadline. If you have any roles that you would like to include in forthcoming e-newsletters, we will do our best to promote these for you. Please email Natasha Blok with any details.

Subscribe to our monthly round up newsletter

Volunteer Story of the Month

Every month typically one volunteer shares their story with residents to inspire them, especially if they volunteer in several organisations. They are featured in our volunteering opportunities e-newsletter to around 4,500 residents, on our social media channels, on our website and if it's a video on our youtube channel.

Here are some past examples:

Volunteer Story of the month September Toby 6 x 4

July 2023 - Meryem Soylemez, volunteering for various organisations

August 2023 - Sandra Lewis, volunteering for form filling leading to employment

September 2023 - Toby McGuinness, volunteering for various organisations

October 2023 - Richard Ming, volunteering for various projects for St Raphael's Hospice

November 2023 - Jo Bolton, volunteering for various organisations

December 2023 - Victoria Hack, volunteering for St Raphale's charity shop as a personification of Christmas joy!

January 2024- Duncan, volunteering for REUK

February 2024 - Patrick and Pinky, and Cynthia, volunteering for various organisations leading to employment. Three amazing volunteers from the Hong Kong Community in Sutton have kindly shared their stories in the run up to Lunar New Year celebrations for February.

Please contact Natasha to submit one of your volunteers.

Bigger promotions

Occasionally in the year, we have a larger promotion which goes across the newsletter, social media and our webpage. The past few years this has been #JoyfyulJanuary.

Our Joyful January promotion was a great successThere are 31 posts on Instagram31 on Facebook, 2 reels on our youtube channel too part 1 here and part 2 here, 5 news pages: week 1week 2week 3week 4week 5, and two newsletters part 1 here and part 2 here

Here's one example:

Joyful January 2024 Day 16

 

We also did a "We love volunteering because..." in February 2024.

2024 February volunteer story of the month we love volunteering because

For each of our promotions where you are featured, please do let Natasha know if they lead to any more enquiries and do continue to share the content.

 

Public Events

On 18th April 2023 we hosted our biggest volunteer recruitment event in over 10 years!

Volunteer Showcase 2023 1  Volunteer Showcase 2023 2

Read more here.

We also share details of other opportunities where you can have a stand such as school employment fairs.

Volunteer Advisors

Volunteer Advisor sessions 1

Our wonderful volunteers have 1:1 sessions with residents to help match them to your roles.

Read more here.

Social Media

Tag us Facebook @VolunteerCentreSutton and Instagram @volunteeringsutton if you would like us to share your post.