Accrediting volunteer learning

Accrediting volunteer learning means that your training for volunteers meets a certain standard.

This can be appealing to volunteers if they know they will earn a qualification. It's also positive for an organisation's reputation.

It's often enough to offer in-house certificates to volunteers on completing training.

You can also recognise volunteer learning by making your training accredited. This is helpful to people volunteering to build new skills or get into a particular career field.

To do this, your organisation can assess its own training or have it assessed by an external expert.

It's possible to seek accreditation for in-house training through external bodies.

These can include:

• OCN London
• CPD
• local colleges or universities.

Accreditation can bring a lot of value to your training programme. But it also takes significant investment and time in gathering and submitting evidence.

ASDAN offers a short course in volunteering. This records and recognises what volunteers do.

If volunteers want to work towards this, think about how you could support them. For example, you could identify what evidence might be helpful for them to submit.

There is a cost involved for learners of this course. You will need to be clear if you will pay for this or not.

• Find out about ASDAN's volunteering short course.