At VAST, we’re passionate about volunteering and provide the support voluntary organisations need to recruit, train, and retain volunteers. From beginning to end, we provide 1:1 support to Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) groups across Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire.

Millions and millions of people volunteer in some way every single year and for many organisations, volunteers are the backbone of their operations. Without them, the number of people these groups support would fall significantly. That’s why it’s important to support your volunteers effectively from the very beginning, and to get your volunteering policies, procedures, and processes right.

So that we can continue in our passion to champion the huge importance of working effectively with volunteers, we have developed the ‘VAST Volunteering Quality Standards’. The scheme provides a framework which organisations can work towards accreditation based on their volunteering policies and procedures, and the way they work with new and existing volunteers.

Our vision for the quality standards scheme is to instil consistent volunteer-related best practice across the whole of the local voluntary sector through structured and proactive support.