Your members can track their volunteering hours through the MSL Volunteering & Employability module, receiving rewards for milestones during their time at university. By taking part in your volunteering scheme and registering their hours on your MSL System, your members can get their commitment to volunteering recognised with certificates, incentives, and a Skills Record that they can present to future employers.

Check out our top tips highlighting fantastic features built into your Volunteering & Employability module you might want to implement! Some time-honoured favourites, some brand new, all designed to encourage engagement with your volunteering scheme.

1) Make it easy for your members to keep track of their volunteering contributions

The Volunteering & Employability module is not exclusively about community volunteering - help your members keep track of their contributions as officers, committee members, buddy scheme buddies and more by including activity types for these roles.

2) Reward your members through multiple award schemes

Set up dedicated award schemes to reward participation based on the type of activity by creating multiple award schemes, allowing you to acknowledge and award students based on individual award schemes with their own set of targets and level of skills settings.

3) Encourage your volunteers to reflect on their volunteering experience…

…by adding a reflective submission as part of each award. 

4) Create a downloadable certificate

Set up a certificate for each award scheme to acknowledge and reward your members. You can have different award certificates for each award scheme with their own design and background, downloadable from the Volunteering profile page.

5) Update your volunteers on their progress with award notifications

Set notifications for each award, so the volunteer gets a congratulations message when they achieve it - good motivation! These are configured on the Edit Award screen in Volunteering Admin. 

6) Provide a skills framework so your members can log examples of learning and development of employability skills

Your volunteers will have great employability examples to add to their CV, and they can download the skills record at any time, giving them a summary of what they've achieved.

7) Use the Training screens to create workshops for courses 

Get volunteers to sign up for various training workshops by using the Training screens to create workshops for courses. A great way to engage and provide seminars on various topics to boost your volunteers' skill set (not to be confused with MSL's signups functionality which doesn't form part of the Volunteering & Employability module functionality). 

8) Simplify hours and skills logging for your volunteers

Give each provider in the system a default activity type. When a volunteer is accepted on an opportunity from that provider, the opportunity will automatically appear in their volunteering log, ready for them to log hours and skills against as soon as they start volunteering:

9) Opportunity details at a glance

By adding custom fields to your activities, your providers are prompted to provide specific details about the opportunity they’re listing to your members, for example, if a DBS is required to participate in the activity, how the volunteer will benefit from the role and the location.

You might also be interested in…

Our Volunteering API surfaces data held within your MSL Volunteering & Employability module, and with this module supporting volunteer, provider and awards functionality the ability to display engagement stats which use real-time data pulled in via an API has proven to be a real draw for new volunteers at UPSU.

Falmouth & Exeter Students’ Union is also using the API to great effect on their Legends volunteering scheme hub.

Thank you!

We hope you've found some of these tips useful - please share your tips with us or get in touch by emailing support@ukmsl.com for help using any of these features.

If there is a particular theme or topic you'd like us to cover, please send us your suggestions and we'll bear them in mind when planning our next post.