Investing in volunteers (IiV) Essentials

IiV Essentials is a free online tool designed especially for volunteer-involving groups and organisations. It was developed nationally and is supported by NCVO, Volunteer Now, Volunteer Scotland and WCVA.

This tool will help you do a basic health check on your volunteer practice. It covers the basic areas to model good practice for involving and managing volunteers. It will help you to think about volunteers’ experiences and how volunteers can help make the biggest difference to your cause.

IiV Essentials is based on the six core areas that make up Investing in Volunteers.

The tool asks you 12 questions, each with a brief explanation to support your discussions and asks you to rate how fully your group or organisation is addressing each question. Where you identify areas for development you can make notes to start your own action plan to help address areas for improvement.

IiV Essentials can be used:

• as a way to do a basic ‘health check’ on your practice to make sure that your volunteers have the best possible experience and can make the biggest difference to the cause
• as a sensible ‘health check’ for any new volunteer initiatives or for existing volunteering that has undergone change (developed or grown) during covid-19
• as a simple and easy way to get started on improving the volunteer journey at your organisation
• as a tool to engage everyone in your group or organisation in discussions about your volunteer involvement
• if you want to move on to use the full Investing in Volunteer quality standard development journey in the future.

To get started, visit IiV Essentials where you’ll sign up and receive your own unique link to a bespoke version of the tool. This will take you back to your answers and results at any time and allow you to update them.

To talk to someone about the IiV Essentials tool please contact the IiV manager for your country:

• England
• Scotland
• Northern Ireland
• Wales – you can download a Welsh version of IiV Essentials below. Please contact WCVA if you have any questions.