A year at NAVCA: looking back at 2022

As 2022 draws to a close, we looked back at some of our highlights from 2022. From launching our Quality Accreditations to running cyber security training, from running our first in-person conference for three years to running a successful event with local authorities, we've had a busy year (and this blog post doesn't cover everything!). As we look ahead to 2023, we want to celebrate what we've achieved and continue to refine and focus our work.

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January: Joining the small staff team at the start of 2022 was our Resources Officer, Beck, and our Health and Wellbeing Manager, Anne-Marie. Beck makes sure everything runs well at NAVCA behind the scenes, and looks after our Board of Trustees - among many other things! Anne-Marie runs our social prescribing projects and brings us delicious baked goods when she comes into the office.

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February: Another new recruit joined NAVCA - Emily started in February as our Communications Officer, running our social media and website, and making sure our members know what's going on at NAVCA and what support they can access from us.

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March: Our Projects Officer, Lydia, completed our safeguarding project, including a safeguarding toolkit in collaboration with members, a mutual aid toolkit with the University of Sussex, and supporting our members' safeguarding work. In March, Anne-Marie set up our social prescribing steering group, to help inform our work in this area.  We published our Anti-Racism Statement and Call to Action, which we encourage all our members to commit to. Our anti-racist group meets regularly to provide a safe space as well as challenge ourselves.

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April: We held a face to face Board meeting in April, bringing together our trustees to help shape NAVCA's governance and strategy. Our accounts and membership teams worked incredibly hard to renew memberships and run a smooth renewals process. Alongside this, the VCS Emergencies Partnership was reconfigured to be hosted within British Red Cross, with our CEO Maddy continuing to co-chair.

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May: Our Policy Manager, Jill, started at NAVCA in May, completing our new team. The Vision for Volunteering officially launched, attracting lots of interest and engagement in improving the volunteering experience for everyone. We also launched our LIQA (Local Infrastructure Quality Accreditation) pilot, with five members going through the journey, supported by our membership team.

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June: We ran Quality Assessor training for our LIQA and VCQA, equipping trainers with the tools and knowledge they need to assess applicants. Thanks to the hard work of Lydia and Cheng Ee, our Membership Officer, we started using our new CRM, enabling us to monitor our engagement with members and stakeholders more effectively. Our Deputy CEO Alex continued to lead work to support the VCS to integrate with ICSs and health transformation, with peer support networks and developing a toolkit.

July: The VCQA (Volunteer Centre Quality Accreditation) launched for existing holders, who are able to achieve the VCQA to demonstrate that they provide effective volunteering services in their local area. We also secured a contract with the British Red Cross to distribute funding to our members to provide infrastructure support to help Ukrainian refugees and the local voluntary sector.

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August: We launched our Ukraine fund, open to applications from our members. We also secured funding from the National Cyber Security Centre to help our members with cyber security training, to keep their organisations and communities safe, and Lydia started to run training sessions for our members on this topic. A highlight of our year was receiving some really positive feedback on our social prescribing work, demonstrating the impact we're having in this area. Then, as autumn started, we became even busier!

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September: Our VCQA applicants started their journey, which we were very excited about, having launched branding for both Quality Accreditations. We secured health work with the National Lottery, and started the fun job of our file restructure, enabling us to be more organised and work more effectively across the team. Our Policy Manager, Jill, held a roundtable session for members on the cost of living crisis, hearing what their key concerns were and what work they are doing to support communities. We also provided briefings and guidance to our members on different aspects of the cost of living crisis, including the energy support schemes.

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October: Our new Projects Officer, Conor, started at NAVCA, joining the Health and Wellbeing team. We held a workshop with the LGA (Local Government Association), talking about our Quality Accreditations. Thirty local authorities attended to hear more about how the VCQA and LIQA can benefit their local voluntary sectors. We also published our annual report for 2021/22, and launched our Quarterly Members' Briefings.

November: In November, we held our annual conference, our first in-person conference for over three years, in rainy Manchester. We brought members together to talk about the important issues facing society and our sector, from racism and food insecurity to resilience and health inequalities. At the conference, four new trustees were elected to our Board. In November, Sheffield Hallam University published their research about local infrastructure, and we are looking at how to continue to talk about this work next year.

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December: Anne-Marie and Conor started drafting a quality framework for social prescribing link workers, which we hope will improve work in this area across the sector. We announced that the Vision for Volunteering project had secured £600,000 of funding from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, meaning the partnership can hire new staff to take the Vision forwards. Finally, we went for our staff Christmas meal to celebrate how much we have done this year, and also how much we have grown and developed as a team.

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And breathe! We're so happy with how NAVCA has developed as an organisation this year, and how our team has worked so well together. We're looking at our priorities for 2023 and we have lots of exciting member events coming up, so do check out our calendar for more information.

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We hope all our members and supporters have a restful holiday, and we'll see you in 2023!

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