INTRODUCTION
Volunteering for the Foundation Stichting IRI Reporting Standard
1. This policy sets out the broad principles by which the Islamic Reporting Initiative (IRI) promotes, manages and recognises the involvement and contribution of volunteers.
2. This policy and its implementation are reviewed annually to ensure it remains appropriate to the needs of the Islamic Reporting Initiative and its volunteers.
VALUES
3. The Islamic Reporting Initiative values the involvement of volunteers in its work because they help reflect the interests, needs and resources of the community we aim to serve and bring a unique perspective to all its work.
4. The Islamic Reporting Initiative recognises volunteers as a core part of its team, with a distinctive but complementary role alongside paid staff.
5. Insofar as the Islamic Reporting Initiative benefits from the skills, experience and enthusiasm of volunteers, we believe that volunteers should be able to gain personal benefits from the experience too. We are committed to managing volunteers in a way that ensures that the needs of both parties are met.
6. The Islamic Reporting Initiative strives to create a diverse and inclusive organisation within a diverse and inclusive community. Therefore we are committed to ensuring equality of access to high-quality volunteer opportunities and equality of treatment for volunteers in all our policies and practices.
DEFINITION OF VOLUNTEERING
7. A volunteer is a person who undertakes unpaid work for the IRI freely and by choice without concern for financial gain or other forms of benefit in kind.
PREPARATION AND PLANNING
8. The Islamic Reporting Initiative identifies roles for volunteers which extend the work of the or-ganisation. Volunteers are involved at every level of the organisation in roles which comple-ment but are never a substitute for the work of paid staff.
9. All volunteers are provided with a written role description outlining the purpose, tasks and main expectations of their role. This role is reviewed at least once a year with the volunteer’s supervisor.
RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION
10. The Islamic Reporting Initiative implements a fair, effective and open system in the recruit-ment and selection of volunteers and treats all information collected in this process confiden-tially. All potential volunteers will go through a recruitment and selection process that is ap-propriate to the role offered. The Islamic reporting initiative uses volunteer agreement, refer-ences and informal chats / interviews. Additional measures may be implemented depending on the nature of the volunteer role, and police records checks are conducted where appropri-ate.
The process is conducted by appropriately briefed/trained staff and aims to allow both parties to give and receive sufficient information to assess whether the volunteer opportunities avail-able match the potential volunteer’s skills, qualities and interests.
If unsuccessful, individuals will be offered an opportunity to discuss the outcome and identify possible alternatives within or outside the Islamic Reporting Initiative.
MANAGEMENT OF VOLUNTEER
11. Volunteers are provided with a handbook which outlines the expectations and responsibilities of both the volunteer and the Islamic Reporting Initiative. This agreement may be reviewed at any time with the consent of the volunteer and the IRI.
12. All volunteers are provided with an induction within six weeks of commencing their voluntary work. The induction provides background information on the Islamic Reporting Initiative, ex-plains its structures and procedures and describes the volunteer role.
13. The Islamic Reporting Initiative aims to reflect the voluntary nature of its relationship with vol-unteers in all policies and procedures for managing their involvement. Therefore the volun-teer’s designated supervisor deals with minor complaints or grievances from or regarding vol-unteers or their work through the usual support and supervision procedures in the first in-stance. However, we recognise our duty to protect the wellbeing and interests of all our stakeholders and therefore operate a formal complaints procedure in the case of more serious complaints.
14. The Islamic Reporting Initiative recognises the core role that volunteers fulfil at every level of the organisation. It endeavours to communicate with volunteers in appropriate ways, including e-mail, skype or/and phone calls. It also recognises the importance of seeking volunteers’ ide-as and opinions, and feedback from volunteers is therefore always welcome.
15. For the effective monitoring of the work that volunteers do and how they are managed, a per-sonal file is maintained for all volunteers, which includes contact details and other relevant personal information, details of the application and selection process, agreements made, hours worked and any complaints or grievances made or received.
16. Both volunteers and the organisation agree that the intellectual property rights of original work produced by volunteers automatically transfer to the organisation.
