The volunteering leadership maturity matrix is a self-assessment tool. It provides a framework for analysing the leadership structures and trust-based support for volunteering. It is designed to provide you with practical insights into areas where your trust is strong and help you identify areas where you might be able to make improvements, using a traditional RAG-rating system and overall score.
EMAS have kindly provided the following feedback regarding their recent use of the tool, providing some helpful insights into how they have utilised the tool and what impact the process has had.
What inspired the utilisation of this tool within EMAS?
The national work to finalise the volunteering maturity matrix, led by AACE.
Does this tool help to address a specific problem or meet a particular need? If so, how?
Yes, it highlighted that EMAS identified where we were with our volunteer strategic direction, specifically around capacity, projects, future volunteering opportunities, internal and external collaborative working and our volunteering culture across the Trust.
How did you go about using this tool? What was the process and who did you involve? What were the timeframes?
We “EMAS-ified it” and then presented at a Board Development Session, then we gave to Board Members to complete the assessment in small groups, the feedback from board members was interesting and varied and certainly thought provoking regarding where we are as a trust in terms of our volunteering infrastructure, maturity, readiness, current work streams and future opportunities.
Has the use of this tool made an impact, and if so, how? To who? Any unexpected findings or impact?
Yes, the Trust is now conducting a review of volunteering, specifically around new opportunities for volunteer roles and services and external third party volunteering rationale, capacity, arrangements and governance for those partner organisations that volunteer for the trust.
What were the key features of this tool for EMAS?
The self assessment questions on the matrix to enable the Trust to measure where the Trust is with volunteering infrastructure, culture and framework for the future strategic and operationally opportunities. Also, where volunteering should sit, how is volunteering services joined up and reporting arrangement up to Board level re progress and developments on our agreed volunteering strategy.
How user-friendly is the tool? Are there any learning curves?
Very user friendly and allows ambulance services to adapt to suit the Trust status re its volunteering status and associated volunteering services and and what the future ambulance volunteer should look like?
Do you think you’ll use the tool again in the future, when and why?
Yes, we can compare our current position after the self assessment to where we are in 2 or 3 years as the volunteer strategy, maturity and volunteering improvement framework develops. We are currently reviewing all this work to inform our future volunteering strategy.
View additional Ambulance Volunteering resources here
If you have any strategic queries about ambulance sector volunteering, please contact joe.crook@aace.org.uk
