Volunteering Handbook

Dot Dot Dot is a social enterprise, which means we are in business to address social needs. We have a commitment to making the communities we work in safer and stronger. 

All of our property guardians volunteer for 16 hours a month for a good cause of their choice, and many do a lot more than this. Volunteering has great benefits both you personally, and the communities around you.

As part of your agreement with us, we ask you to submit an online Volunteer Report Form each month to tell us about your volunteering. It’s an important part of your guardianship with Dot Dot Dot and enables us to measure our social impact and discover more about the projects and organisations you’re contributing to.

Whether you are already volunteering, or are new to it, we hope that you will find this handbook a helpful resource.

Volunteering and its benefits

There are plenty of ways people can choose to make a positive social impact. When Dot Dot Dot was started in 2011 by Katharine Hibbert, she chose volunteering as a way to identify people who would be good guardians, and as an important activity that her social enterprise would encourage.

Katharine believed that if you provided people with safe, inexpensive housing they would have more time and energy to do other things that mattered to them:

• Time because not having to pay high rent can enable people to work fewer hours, or people can live closer to their jobs and therefore cut down on commuting time;
• Energy because reducing anxieties linked to financial hardship, and unsafe or unsuitable housing, would mean people were in a better place emotionally to think about contributing to a cause.

16 hours a month enables our guardians to make a significant difference to a cause. It also has a positive impact on individuals. In a 2020 guardian survey:

• 81% said volunteering gave them a feeling of making a difference, and 67% said it gave them satisfaction
• 48% said it had helped give them new roots and contacts in their community
• 47% said volunteering had improved their mental health and wellbeing
• 35% said it had helped them feel less isolated
• 31% said it had improved their confidence.

Types of volunteering

We ask that your volunteering aligns with a charitable purpose as defined in the Charities Act in 2011. Volunteering can be both in person or remote, as long as it falls under this definition and makes a meaningful contribution to a cause.

Covid-19 shone a spotlight on the importance of local communities, and we know that many of our guardians joined and contributed significantly to local Mutual Aid groups as a result. We recognise this as volunteering and count it as part of the required 16 hours a month. 

We summarise types of volunteering under the following two categories:

Volunteering for an organisation or charity – this includes any volunteering done through an organisation, including Mutual Aid or other community activities such as a local organised litter pick. We ask that at least eight hours of your total volunteering hours are affiliated with organisations or charities. Volunteering in this category does NOT need to be for a registered charity. You will find details of organisations, charities and community activities included on our volunteering opportunities document.

Unaffiliated volunteering – this includes voluntary activities that are not affiliated with an organisation or charity.. Unaffiliated activities are likely to be ad-hoc or independent contributions that you have made (such as checking on elderly neighbours or tidying a shared garden). You can only include up to eight hours of unaffiliated volunteering in your monthly form, but of course we encourage you to support your community however you can. There are some safety considerations when carrying out unaffiliated volunteering – check below for more advice.

Examples of volunteering:

What does not count as volunteering:

• Anything that’s paid! Whether in cash or kind
• Helping out family and / or friends
• Political campaigning

What doesn’t count toward your 16 hours:

• Travel to / from volunteering location
• Searching / applying / interviewing for volunteering roles
• Training for sponsored events, even if the beneficiary is a charity
• Time spent organising the logistics of a group activity or event with other guardians –  – please check with your relationship coordinator – some of the planning hours might not be possible to record, but the event itself would be.

If you are volunteering, we would like you to be able to tell us about it and to count that time toward your goal of 16 hours per month.

If you are unsure if your activities fall under our definition of volunteering, or if you don’t know how to record your volunteering effectively, email our volunteering assistant Phoebe at hello@dotdotdotproperty.com.

Volunteering safely

If you are volunteering through an organisation or charity, it is likely that they will provide guidance for keeping safe while you volunteer. 

If your volunteering is not affiliated with an organisation or charity, it is really important that you safeguard both yourself and others from any potential risks of the activities you are undertaking. This is particularly important when you are volunteering alone in the community, handling money, entering other people’s homes, or having contact with vulnerable people.

Use your judgement to think through the risks of any activity you are planning to do, and ensure you are well prepared before setting off. The government has published guidance on keeping Covid-safe while you volunteer. There is also guidance on this page on what to do if you are concerned about the physical or mental health of someone you are supporting.

We also recommend that you check your local council’s website for more advice, useful links and contacts.

Finding volunteering that's right for you

We encourage you to find volunteering opportunities that are right for you, fit around your work and other commitments, and are for a cause, organisation or group that you are passionate about. Here are a few tips if you are looking for new opportunities:

1. Think about the causes that you feel passionate about.
2. Think about what skills you have, what you would like to learn and what you enjoy doing (e.g. being outside, talking to people, organising projects, getting creative and making things etc). Volunteering can be more rewarding and impactful if you’re doing what you’re good at!
3. Think about your availability and lifestyle. Where can you travel to, or does it need to be remote? Can you commit to a regular weekly slot, or do you need something more flexible? All of these things might guide your choice of volunteering.
4. Begin doing research online or over the phone. Look for opportunities that line up with your preferences. Start making applications or arranging your first volunteering as soon as you can, it can take time to get signed up for a role.

Volunteering resources

• Do-it – search for all sorts of volunteering opportunities across the UK, including remote opportunities. 
• Reach – great for more desk-based roles.
• Team London – London specific volunteering page.
• whatCharity – you can search by location, mission, impact and more.

We have also compiled a list of volunteering opportunities that we are aware of. While we try to keep this as up-to-date as possible, we cannot guarantee that all opportunities are live or have a requirement for new volunteers. Also look out for volunteering opportunities in our guardian newsletter, and on our Guardian Facebook page. 

Our top tips for finding opportunities:

• Think about the challenges that communities in general are facing at the moment and if there is something that you can do to help. It might be combating social isolation by speaking on the phone to people who live alone, or supporting your local food bank to help those in need. Reach out to the relevant organisations and see how you can support them.
• Speak to other guardians about the volunteering that they do.
• Research what’s happening in your area that you could get involved with – most areas have a Facebook group where local charities and organisations promote events or ask for help from volunteers.

Let us know about your volunteering and we can promote it and you! The best way to do this is to get in touch with our volunteering assistant, Lea at lea.gimpel-lichtarz@dotdotdotproperty.com.

Telling us about your volunteering

Every month we will email you an online Volunteer Report Form asking you to provide details on the volunteering you have completed that month.

We love to hear about the volunteering you’re doing, as do the owners of the properties you live in. It strengthens our case to use empty properties for good, so please do take a few minutes each month to give us some details about what you do, how it’s made you feel, and any benefits for you or the cause you support. 

We ask you to submit this before the fifth of the month of the next month so we can collect the data and follow-up where appropriate.

We require the following evidence of your volunteering activities each month, in order of preference:

1. 1. The name of the charity or organisation and the name and telephone number and/or email address of your point of contact.
   2. Where the above is not possible:
      • • A contact name and number and/or email of a fellow volunteer / coordinator e.g. from a Mutual Aid Group, or
        • A screenshot or link showing that you signed up and/or completed your volunteering activities.
   3. Where none of the above is possible, e.g. for unaffiliated volunteering, photo(s) of the activity e.g. before and after photos of a litter pick, or shopping on a doorstep. Please do not include photos of anyone without their permission.

Examples of preferred evidence:

Filling out the form

To find out how to complete the Volunteering Report form, watch our instructional video. If you still have any questions about filling out the form, contact us at hello@dotdotdotproperty.com.

What happens once you’ve told us about your volunteering

We check all submissions, and carry out spot checks on a small number of forms each month. Submitting the form is a requirement of your guardianship and so we have procedures in place to follow up with you if you have not completed the form.

We ask that you still complete the form even if you did not manage to reach 16 hours during the previous month. You can let us know via the form if there were circumstances that affected your ability to reach 16 hours, or if you have already found opportunities to increase your volunteering hours. 

We understand that this may particularly be the case in your first three months as a guardian with us. However, beyond that we will be in touch to see how we can help if your volunteering hours are consistently under 16 each month. Please note that completing 16 hours of volunteering each month is part of your licence agreement with us and repeatedly failing to complete forms or your volunteering hours may result in us terminating this agreement.

We are in awe of the great volunteering that our guardians do and regularly celebrate their efforts. We may therefore get in touch if we read a great story to see if you would be happy for us to share it. For a look at some recent stories and to be inspired take a look at our Instagram, or Facebook page.

We look forward to hearing about the great causes that you contribute your time to. If you have any further questions, please reach out to your relationship coordinator.