Upcoming deadlines:
Deadline to get information in for the December 2024 newsletter: Tuesday 26th November, please let us know if there are any relevant days/weeks that links 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.
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:
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 Raphael'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.
March 2024 - two ladies for Sutton Befrienders celebrating International Women's Day.
April 2024 - Anthony French, volunteering for MAPS Mentoring
May 2024 - Sara Lee, Cre8 Football for Mental Health Month 2024 theme being Movement: Moving more for our mental health
June 2024 - Dom, The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity.
July 2024 - Peter Struik EcoLocal, Friends of Parks, Sutton Soup, community photographer and more!
August 2024 - Multiple for Home-Start Sutton
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 success. There are 31 posts on Instagram, 31 on Facebook, 2 reels on our youtube channel too part 1 here and part 2 here, 5 news pages: week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4, week 5, and two newsletters part 1 here and part 2 here.
Here's one example:
We also did a "We love volunteering because..." in February 2024.
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!
We also share details of other opportunities where you can have a stand such as school employment fairs.
Volunteer Advisors
Our wonderful volunteers have 1:1 sessions with residents to help match them to your roles.
Social Media
Tag us Facebook @VolunteerCentreSutton and Instagram @volunteeringsutton if you would like us to share your post.