On Vacation

Not much happened during the merry month of June as Help From Home was 'out of town' so to speak. Still, I managed to add a 'Business Case for Employee Volunteering' webpage to compliment the 'Lunch Break Volunteering' campaign I'm running at the moment.

Some other brief snippets of 'happenings':

- Managed to secure the endorsement of Jamie Thomas, CEO of Red Foundation and i-volunteer for my campaign directed at encouraging high street Volunteer Centres to promote micro volunteering. Pyjamatastic!

- I contacted the WCVA (Wales Council for Voluntary Action) to support my campaign at Volunteer Centres. They stated they wouldn't put their name to it, but instead would actively promote micro volunteering to the various Welsh Volunteer Centres under their wing using information I supply them. This is really encouraging as they are the first main volunteer body to both acknowledge and promote micro volunteering. Marvellicious!

- I wrote a feature back in January explaining the concept of micro volunteering for i-volunteer. Have been told in the past couple of days that it is the most widely read article on their network. Looks like micro volunteering is gaining ground in popularity. Woohoo!

- In the past, I haven't been too sure about the impact that HFH could make in the volunteering world. I'm beginning to see some real tangible results from my efforts and it really is only now dawning on me as to how massive the untapped market of micro volunteering could be.

- I've looked at a few stats to see what potential the market has, that HFH could tap into. I have no idea how many people might be interested in micro volunteering, so I've just let the figures speak for themselves and let you decide what the market could be:
England + Wales adult population (Help From Home) = 26 million
UK businesses (Lunch Break Volunteering) = 2.15 million
UK Care Homes (Care Services scheme) = 21,000
UK outgoing tourists (Help From Holiday - under construction)= 8.8 million
England + Wales school kids (Help From School - under construction) = 12 million
UK Volunteers (people who participate in a voluntary act) = 20.3 million

Figures taken from various sources including UK 2001 Census, carehome.co.uk etc

That's alot of people and obviously, not everybody will be interested in micro volunteering, but the high number of UK volunteers is suggestive that there's potentially a huge area of interest to be tapped.

But of course, that's just the UK, what about ..... well, I'll just let your mind wander about the rest of the world!!

Bits and Pieces

Last month saw quite a few organisations show a bit of interest in Help From Home as well as say some nice things about it (whether they say that just to be nice to every initiative that comes along is something I’ll never know). Anyway, here’s a few organisations who showed a bit of interest in Help From Home and what they promised to do.

- Community Channel, which is a TV channel/website, have hinted that they are interested in showing a video that I made about micro volunteering on their TV channel. A few technical issues have to be ironed out first. Watch this space!

- Media Trust, which is the parent company of Community Channel, have hinted that they are interested in including Help From Home in a UK National Guide to Volunteering. They are interested in the ‘Do Good’ card campaign as well as the ‘pyjamas’ hook I use. Watch this space!

- NAPA (National Association for Providers of Activities for Older People) have hinted that they are interested in writing an article about Help From Home concerning its efforts to engage residents of care homes in micro volunteering via its meaningful activity programme suggestions. Watch this space!

- Vinspired, a website that promotes volunteering in the UK between the ages of 18-25 have hinted that they would like to include Help From Home onto their database. They attract over 100,000 visits/month so that would be quite something if I could get on their database. So far, I’ve not been able to get the appropriate form from Vinspired to get to the next stage. Watch this space!

- Voluntary Action Cardiff (VAC) have hinted that they would like to see an article about Help From Home in their next quarterly magazine, due out in September. Watch this space!

- Seems to be a lot of staring into space lately!

In other news, I am gearing up for an email campaign directed at all the Volunteer Centres in the UK, to try and encourage them to consider promoting micro volunteering if a ‘customer’ seems to be interested in something like this. So far I have got Rob Jackson one of the Directors of Volunteering England to endorse this campaign which I hope will add a bit more weight/credibility to it. I do hope it will be a stepping stone to reel in some more big fry from the UK voluntary sector.

I’ve also freshened up the website a bit with swishes of green and orange lines instead of the previous dominant purple colour. I’ve also added a bit more emphasis to the pyjama hook I use to encourage people to micro volunteer.

Til next time.