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 the new edition of Investing in Volunteers
launching in 2021.
How it works
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.
Getting started
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.
Contact us
To talk to someone about the IiV Essentials tool please contact the IiV manager in your country
- England
- Scotland
- Northern Ireland (also ROI managed by Volunteer Ireland in partnership with Volunteer Now)
- Wales - You can download a Welsh version of IiV Essentials here (PDF,205KB). Please contact WCVA if you have any questions.