Get your staff volunteering
Involving your people in an employee supported volunteering programme is beneficial to both your staff and your business. CSR activity has the potential to raise market value by 4-6%, increase revenues by up to 20% and decrease staff turnover rates by up to 50%, helping companies to attract, develop, engage and retain talent.
Media Trust provides a range of opportunities and events to get your staff engaged in volunteering. Whether individually, in small groups or across the organisation, we run bespoke activities that meet your company’s needs while providing invaluable support to hundreds of charities and community groups in the UK.
Engaging your staff
Media Trust is the charity that connects the media and creative industry and their staff with the charity sector. We make it easy for your staff to engage in skills-based volunteering. We’ll work with your company to develop meaningful, impactful and fun events and opportunities that allow your employees to use their skills to make an impact on causes they care about. We are here to support you and your staff to volunteer in the following ways:
- Design – tailored volunteering opportunities to maximise the skills of your employees and meet your company’s values, area of interest, CSR and business objectives
- Connect – we have access to thousands of charities facing communications challenges across the UK which are looking for your support. We’ll connect you with charities, so you can make a difference, whether to cause related issues such as homelessness and mental health, or to charities close to your offices or target regions
- Facilitate – volunteering activity including training for volunteers and mentors, ensuring all volunteer activity achieves positive outcomes for the charity and volunteers
- Advise – we’ve been leading volunteering activity for the creative and media industry for over 23 years, from designing national volunteering programmes to one-off company charity days. We are here to advise you on your volunteering strategy, activity and engagement
- Impact – understanding the impact Media Trust volunteers have on the charities, communities and young people they support is vital. We collate feedback, impact stories and case studies and share them with you, so you can see the difference you make
Your staff could help produce powerful content to help charities tell their stories.
Volunteer Matching
Our Volunteer matching platform allows charities to post a volunteer opportunity outlining their communication challenge and brief. Volunteers can choose from the list of charity opportunities and select a charity based on their skill set and availability. They can either offer help on a one off or on-going basis. View the latest charity requests here.
Our volunteer matching events enable staff to spend time with a number of charities and provide on the spot support and advice.
Volunteering Activities
We offer a variety of engaging face-to-face volunteering activities. Each are designed to connect your staff with charities looking for communications advice and ideas. These events are a great way for your volunteers to meet a range of charities and offer on the spot advice, as well as explore the option of volunteering with them longer term.
Volunteer and charity networking events
Our volunteer networking events are fun and informal activities based on a speed-dating model. They bring together around 10-15 charities with the same number of volunteers to provide immediate communications advice. Each volunteer has up to 10 minutes to discuss a charity’s specific challenge, story or campaign idea and to offer advice, ideas, contacts and suggestions. By doing so, they provide the charity with invaluable insight and an outsider’s perspective. They also provide a great way for your staff to meet and support a variety of charities at a time. At the end of the event, volunteers and charities decide whether they would like to work together going forward.
Charity Challenge
Get a team together to spend a day putting their skills to excellent use by focusing on a charity’s specific communications challenge. Volunteers will spend a day working alongside the charity focusing on their brief, which could be anything from engaging new target audiences using digital channels, launching a Christmas campaign, challenging the stigma around mental health or developing a communications strategy to raise the public profile of a charity in the media. The team will come up with new ideas and develop strategies and an action plan for the charity to take away and implement. This intensive day provides the charity with a day of pro bono support, as well as monthly follow up from the team. Find out more here.
Training and masterclasses
We run an annual training programme to help charities develop their PR, marketing, digital, content and film-making skills. We need volunteers to design and deliver engaging half-day and full-day workshops for up to 15 charities per course.
In addition to our standard training programme, we also run a number of masterclasses throughout the year. Each masterclass is developed around a topical and relevant theme to help charities’ communications stand out. With a mix of ted-style talks and 1:1 surgeries for volunteers to give on the spot, bespoke advice to the charities in the room your organisation could be helping up to up to 30 charities in one session. If you would like to share your organisation’s skills and expertise at one of these half-day events, then get in touch.
Youth mentoring
You may want to give something back and become a youth mentor. Media Trust run a number of youth-based media programmes to help diverse young people break into the media industry. We need volunteers to help these young people clarify their career goals, identify potential barriers and work with them to develop tools and techniques to overcome challenges and achieve success.
Skilled staff can share their expertise with a group of charities and build their capacity by becoming a volunteer trainer.
Our Corporate Partners
We enjoy outstanding support from the media industry. Our partners include:
