Volunteer Organizations Editing and Proofreading Services

Volunteering fails at the join between what an organisation needs and what a person imagined they were offering. Someone signs up wanting to be useful for a couple of hours a week, receives an induction pack designed for staff, waits three weeks for a disclosure check nobody explained, arrives to find no one expecting them, and does not come back. The organisation records this as unreliability. It is almost always a documentation failure, and it happens at the same three points every time.

We edit what volunteer-involving organisations and volunteer centres produce — volunteer role descriptions and recruitment adverts, application and expression of interest forms, induction and welcome packs, volunteer handbooks and policies, training material and briefing notes, supervision and support documentation, expenses policies and claim guidance, safeguarding and disclosure check explanations, problem-solving and complaints procedures for volunteers, recognition and thank-you communications, exit conversations and reference practice, trustee and committee recruitment, and impact reporting on volunteer contribution. Our editors work with organisations whose volunteer coordinator is also doing three other jobs.

The role description is the document that determines who applies and whether they stay, and most are written as job descriptions with the salary removed. A volunteer is choosing how to spend discretionary time against every other thing they could do with it, and needs to know what they will actually be doing, when and for how long, what the minimum commitment is and whether it can flex, what happens before they start — the check, the training, how long it takes and who pays — and who they will be with, since a great many people volunteer for the company. We rewrite these so all of that appears, so the task is described honestly including the dull parts, because someone who discovers the dull parts on week two leaves and someone who was told about them does not, and so the minimum commitment is real rather than aspirational. We also write the waiting period properly, since the gap between applying and starting is where most volunteers are lost — a fortnightly note saying where the check has got to costs nothing and retains people the organisation has already recruited.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including volunteer records and material about identifiable people. We are editors rather than HR, safeguarding or legal advisers, and we offer no view on volunteer status, employment law questions or any check or vetting requirement. What we can do is make the writing honest about the role and clear about what happens next.