Write a badge for volunteering

This is the long title for the badge and the first opportunity to provide detail. You should include the volunteer role. You might also like to include your organisation name or relevant charity / project.

Who will this badge be issued to?
- Select “Individuals” if this badge is for individuals undergoing volunteering.

- Select “Organisations” if this badge recognises volunteering at an organisational level.

Badge Name – Short Title
- Include the volunteer role or a shortened version (maximum 30 characters including spaces), or a fun recognition of what earning the badge says about the earner.

Badge Description
- This should be a brief summary of the badge. For more information, please see Writing a great badge description.

Be sure to include the voluntary role, service length, and an overview of what earners achieve by completing it e.g.
"Earners of this badge have successfully completed a voluntary role as a Steward for a four-day music festival.”

URL for Additional Details
- Include a link to your organisation’s website so that anyone viewing the badge online can easily find information about you or other volunteering opportunities that you offer.

Badge Standard Layer
- Select “Demonstrate”.

Sector / Industry:
- Select the sector / industry that your organisation or the specific voluntary role relates to. If you feel none apply, select “Other” and enter a relevant sector or industry into the box that appears below.

Topic / Theme / Curriculum Area:
- Enter a term for the area of study or learning that the voluntary role has taken place in to refine the Sector / Industry.

E.g., if your answer to Sector / Industry was “Charity and Social Enterprise”, you might refine this by using “Campaigning” as your topic.

Sub – Topic / Theme / Curriculum Area:
- Entering an answer here is optional but is available if you would like to provide another generic tag that can add additional context to your answers above e.g. “Fund Raising”.

This section is the place to detail what your earners have achieved throughout their participation. For more information on how to complete this section, please see How to write earning criteria.

Some recommended information that is valuable to include is:

• A breakdown of their role responsibilities (you might find it helpful having a volunteer role profile handy while writing this).
• A breakdown of tasks, procedures, and industry-specific knowledge that they have completed / demonstrated that will help them articulate the experience they’ve gained with you.
• Their use of any equipment, tools (physical or digital), platforms, and standards for which proficiency is essential to your industry / sector or career paths associated with this apprenticeship.
• Reference to the fact that they have volunteered their time to participate. This is a good opportunity to mention what this demonstrates about the earner e.g. commitment, generosity with time, care for others etc.
• Any training they must complete in order to deliver the role e.g. Health and Safety.
• Any behaviours, attitudes and values that matter to your organisation and have been displayed by the volunteer.

This is the place to list each skill that your earners have developed / demonstrated while completing their volunteering. This may well be a long list if your volunteers complete many tasks over a long period of time but don’t be intimidated – this is a valuable part of your badge and will support earners to clearly identify their transferable skills.

If you have been very detailed in your earning criteria, you might find the Navigatr Skills Scanner a useful tool for extracting a list of tags – for more information, please see Generating Skills Tags with the Skills Scanner.

Before moving on with writing your badge, be sure to review your list of tags and ensure that each skill is mentioned in the earning criteria section. For more information, please see Referencing skills tags in earning criteria.

Activity Type:
- Select “Volunteer”.

Who is this activity available to?
- If your volunteer opportunities have no strict eligibility criteria and everyone is invited to participate without an application process, select “This badge is open to all”.

- If your earners can only participate if they are existing students, members, or employees of your organisation, select “This badge is only available to Students, Members, or Employees”.

- If your earners must go through an application process to participate, select “Available by application only, please contact the provider for more information”.

How long does the activity take to complete?

- Choose a timeframe from the drop-down menu. You might consider choosing the minimum, or average, timeframe that this voluntary role / activity takes to complete.

- Your chosen timeframe should be the total time an earner has engaged with volunteering. If your badge is for volunteering at a series of events taking place over time, be sure to choose the total timeframe for engagement e.g. if they have done one hour per week for 6 weeks, although it is only 6 hours of activity, they are engaged with you for a total of six weeks.

Does the earner pay to access the activity?
- If the earners do not need to pay to participate, select “Free – Earners access this activity for free”.

- If earners must fund themselves to participate, select “Paid – Earners pay to access this activity”.

Activity Location:

- Select whether the volunteering role or activity takes place “In-person” or “Online”. Choose whichever feels most appropriate for how your earners engage with volunteering.

Your answer to this will dictate whether you are asked to provide a postal address or a URL as a location.

If volunteers work across multiple locations, or a mix of online and in-person, please select in-person and use your organisation’s main admin/office address.

Does your badge map to an additional standard?

 Standards, also known as Alignments, are a way to add further detail to a badge when earners must meet a formal standard while earning a badge. For example, if an earner has to have gained an official qualification to achieve the earning criteria, you might like to consider including this as an additional standard.

If your badge does not align with a formal standard:

- Select “No”.

If your badge aligns with a formal standard:
- Select “Yes”.

This will open three new fields in the form.

Standard Name:
- Enter the name of the apprenticeship qualification associated with this badge.

Standard Description:
- Enter a brief description (up to 350 characters including spaces) summarising this qualification. You will often find an appropriate short paragraph describing the qualification on the awarding body’s website.

 Standard URL:
- Enter a URL to information about the qualification to the relevant awarding body’s website.