Staff volunteer in their local communities
University staff give time back to their local communities through volunteering.
The University has had a special leave policy which entitles staff to one day of paid leave each year to volunteer for a charity, organisation or other good cause. Unfortunately, however, the policy was not very well known amongst staff, and as a result, very few staff utilised their day of volunteering leave.
As part of the new Community Plan, the University commits to raise awareness of the policy and increase uptake. If all staff used their day of volunteering leave, we would collectively give back more than 100,000 hours to our local communities each year.
In the first year since we published the Community Plan, we’ve made some good progress in this area. We’ll continue to work on embedding this policy into University life and report on uptake and outcomes of staff volunteering in future years.
The University hired a dedicated team member to help with the effective roll-out of the policy. This included lots of behind the scenes work to develop the logistics of enabling staff to use their leave, volunteering best practice, as well as the creation of new webpages with volunteering opportunities and a big effort to promote the policy internally.
Despite difficult circumstances due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many members of staff have reached out to help and support a huge range of different initiatives and projects across the city region.
Annie’s story
Many staff shared their experiences of using their ‘Day to Make a Difference’, and many community organisations have been teamed up with staff to help them with specific needs. One example is Annie Lovett, Senior Philanthropy Officer, Development & Alumni, who used her ‘Day to Make a Difference’ to volunteer with Pregnancy and Parents Centre.
After her initial volunteering leave was finished, Annie continued to work with the centre, offering her time and expertise to help the organisation further their mission. Having first-hand experience of some of the personal challenges that the Centre supports, Annie wanted to put her professional expertise to use in a charity doing something that was meaningful to her.
Foremost, I wanted to put my professional knowledge and skills that I had gained at the University, and specifically working as a trusts and foundations fundraiser in Development & Alumni, to use in a smaller, local organisation in Edinburgh. I was also looking for an opportunity to broaden my expertise around charity governance and management.
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In upcoming years, we plan to continue our work to encourage staff to use their ‘Day to Make a Difference’. New systems that are currently under development will allow us to easily find out how many staff are using their volunteering leave year on year. We’ll use this data to report on this commitment in future years, as well as capturing stories from our staff and local organisations.
How this work contributes to our Community Plan
Commitment 9: Encourage staff to take part in the University’s new ‘Day to Make a Difference’ scheme (staff can take one day of paid leave each year to volunteer on a community project of their choice), and highlight ways members of the local community can take part in University activities.
Find out more
Email Local@ed.ac.uk if you’d like our staff to volunteer with your organisation.
Visit our dedicated webpages if you are a staff member who’d like to find out more about employee volunteering.
Read more volunteering stories from the last year
View the University’s Special Leave Policy