• Please ensure you complete the Service Level Agreement; uploading up to date Public Liability Insurance, Health and Safety Policy and ticking the box to confirm you are a non-profit organisation. This is vital as we will not be able to see your application on our system until this is completed.
• When you first register with The Union, this is an initial sign up where we will review the charity or organisation as a whole. Once you have been accepted, you can then begin uploading specific opportunities. To avoid repetition in your adverts, we ask that you only state general information about your organisation in the profile, going into more detail in the specific role uploads thereafter. This is integral, as not only can this not be changed once registered, but it also won’t be seen before uploading an opportunity.
• We don’t advertise volunteering outside of the UK.
• Once you have uploaded the ‘Organisation’ section, only the volunteering team will be able to edit this, so please contact us if you would like this section edited in any way.

• We don’t approve roles where students are required to volunteer for more than two full days a week. The exceptions to these are a few roles where students volunteer for a week or longer just during summer holidays.
• With current government restrictions, we would appreciate if you could outline whether the opportunity you are advertising is virtual / in person with social distancing rules / will become available once restrictions ease, so students are aware of where and when they are expected to start volunteering.
• Once you upload the commitment level, start and end date section, this cannot be edited by you or the volunteering team, so please ensure this is correct.
• The Search Listing Text section should be short and snappy. Aim for 10-20 words, longer than this is unlikely to fit in the section.
• Our website uses category tags to allow students to filter their search. These include: date filter, availability, area of interest, interested activities, skills can be gained and required skills. Please ensure you fill these out as accurately as possible, as this is how students will find your opportunities.
• Students should not be signposted to apply outside The Union website eg. via your organisation’s website or email address. This is because we use our portal to monitor student activity, it allows students to access our reward and recognition scheme and it means we are able to help with any queries the students may have. If the role requires applications through your website/extra forms, we suggest you use The Union’s system as a registration of interest from the students, contacting applicants with further details. All we ask is that you log all successful applicants on our portal.

• This section requires you to select whether the opportunity is on-going or one-off
• On-going refers to roles which will require the students to volunteer on a weekly/monthly basis
• One-off opportunities refer to those which students will volunteer on one day only with no further commitments

• Intern - This usually implies the opportunity is unpaid work experience. We like to reinforce the idea that volunteering is more than just skills gained, but an opportunity to give back to the community. Alternatives may include: ‘assistant’, ‘team member’, ‘volunteer’.
• Qualifications - Question why the students will need qualifications. We appreciate certain roles may require a particular level of experience, but we often promote volunteering as a way of gaining these skills. Where a level of expertise is needed, perhaps use the term ‘proven experience’ instead.

You can find students applications on your Union profile under 'Volunteering – Opportunities – Applications'. You can review student volunteers’ applications and approve/decline them by selecting the cog icon at the very end of each row. This is a vital step in ensuring that students gain access to our rewards and recognitions scheme.