Volunteering action plan

Plan aims

The Volunteering Action Plan (the 'Plan') aims to create a Scotland where everyone can volunteer, more often, and throughout their lives. The Plan builds upon 'Volunteering for All: Our National Framework' (the 'Framework').^[1]

While the Plan will 'touch' a wide range of volunteering stakeholders, we anticipate that this document will have the greatest interest (and most relevance) for those providing national, regional, or local level development support to volunteering. COVID-19 showed how volunteering contributed greatly to our society across the full 'Volunteering Spectrum (see 'The Framework'^[2]), and the Volunteering Action Plan identifies how we can maximise this impact going forward. The specific end goals of the Plan which will determine its success are:

• Increase volunteering participation by focusing on non-volunteers and lapsed volunteers, and especially those who'll gain most benefit.
• Widen access to volunteering by understanding and reducing the barriers to participation and supporting community-based, 'place-making' activities.
• Listen to volunteers by ensuring that the volunteer 'voice' is heard and that volunteers help make the decisions that affect them.
• Provide great experiences whereby volunteers feel supported, valued and recognised for their contribution.

The 'Plan' directly supports the National Performance Framework and specifically in relation to the five 'volunteering outcomes', namely:

• Volunteering and participation is valued, supported and enabled from the earliest possible age and throughout life
• Volunteering in all its forms is integrated and recognised in our lives through national and local policy
• There is an environment and culture which celebrates volunteers and volunteering and all of its benefits
• The places and spaces where we volunteer are developed, supported and sustained
• There are diverse, quality and inclusive opportunities for everyone to get involved and stay involved.^[3]

To achieve these goals and outcomes, the Plan addresses key cross-cutting issues including how we improve our Policy Impact over time, and key actions to effectively fund and resource the Plan in Funding for Success. We've also described an Enabling Environment with elements around Leadership, Evidence and Voice, Learning, Capacity Building, Resilience, and Digital Volunteering. Actions within these areas will improve our ability to work effectively and collectively on the key challenges facing volunteering over the next 10-years.

The development of the Plan involved an intense co-produced effort, with Working Groups focused on each of the volunteering outcomes. This successful engagement model will underpin its rollout through the empowerment of many more people - especially those closest to the issues and decisions. It will require that we organise in new ways, that we engage and involve stakeholders in their Plan and that we monitor and evaluate our actions and continuously improve. A learning culture is central to this approach where we continue to build our understanding of volunteering as part of a wider system - see Appendix 1.

A 'Living' Plan

The Volunteering Action Plan is designed to provide actions over a 10-year period. It is a 'Living' Plan, one that is worked on by 'us all', frequently and consistently. This is driven by a learning culture, by monitoring and evaluating 'what works', and also through identifying 'how we can improve'. While there will be an initial published version of the Plan, the Plan will be dynamic:

• Participants and the number of ways to engage in the Plan, will change over time e.g. new working groups will naturally form and disband as they take one or more actions to a conclusion.
• The System Map, capturing our shared understanding of how volunteering outcomes are created, will change as our understanding grows (see System Map visualisation).
• Actions are 'experimental' by nature. Actions are conceived, refined, adapted, improved and stopped. This approach improves actions over time - actions and their outcomes become more certain not less. Through the Plan we will manage a list of actions and ideas for change; actions will also be at different stages of development.
• Support is also intrinsically dynamic. We anticipate a learning community built around the Plan and support needs will reflect the needs of the community.
• The dynamic aspects of the Plan (which make it a 'Living' Plan) are addressed in the published document through live links to shared materials, online spaces, repositories and websites, as appropriate.