All in a day for a Community Champion

Yesterday was a Community Champion day of two halves. At 10am I hosted our monthly Community Champion Coffee Morning at Windsor’s Family Hub and at 6pm I was a guest at the Community Festival hosted by Frimley NHS and RBWM.

There was half a dozen of us at the morning session. I have to say, when there are fewer attendees, the conversations seem to have greater depth. It could simply be that my brain prefers less to try and remember 😉

Helen Price gave us valuable insight into how she builds strong networks and you can read her summary below.

The Community Festival was celebrating all the different projects that have been given some funding to build communities this last year or so post Covid.

I received some funding for what I called “Blokes Losing Timber” but blokes struggled to join in… so I have simplified it down to The Long Walk, which is building in momentum. Join us next Thursday 10am at The Two Brewers… the pint after a 4 mile walk helps 😉

It was nice to catch up with some of the Cllrs and officers I haven’t seen for a while and meet some new faces like Malcolm Bush who is organising Walking Cricket at Windsor Leisure Centre on a Thursday between 11am and 12:30pm. Call Tristan on 07774 243850 or email tristan@329marketing.com if you’d like to know more.

FINDING VOLUNTEERS by Cllr Helen Price

The key to finding volunteers is to be “on the case” all the time.

Your charity has to be known within the community. Social media is an easy tool to raise your profile. Nextdoor enables you to target a particular geographical area whilst twitter goes anywhere. Local facebook groups usually welcome information on community groups/charities. Posting just once a month raises your profile, is easy to do and costs nothing.

Your best source of volunteers is recommendation from your existing volunteers so ensuring you are a good manager is vital, accepting managing volunteers is more challenging than managing staff. Building good relationships with your volunteers ensuring they are valued, treated with respect and know you are a fair manager are essentials.

I have a RBWM role as Corporate Social Responsibility Champion. I contact large organisations and offer them support in delivering their CSR strategy. For example many organisations encourage their staff to spend two days a year volunteering. I can help them by matching the interest of their staff to the needs of local groups. For that I need information from the groups on what they need. I work closely with Cllr Jack Douglas who is the Champion for Volunteering.

I work closely with Centrica regarding volunteering, having monthly meetings. They very actively encourage staff to volunteer in the local community. This could be one-off’s eg painting a room, clearing the Remembrance Garden or something on a more regular basis eg supporting a local group with enhancing its business skills (very necessary as we face an uncertain future). Centrica are now listing local volunteering opportunities on a monthly basis and I want to know what local community groups need so I can pass this onto Centrica.

RBWM can support you in finding volunteers. Just google RBWM Volunteers.You can post details of your group and what you need online. The Community

Group officers will then personally match residents who’ve indicated they want to volunteer (some 75 at the last count) with groups. So my recommendation is post yourself there without delay.