At Time & Talents we are proud of our record in the Westminster community. All of our projects are set up and managed by us from start to finish, and deliver consistently high standards of support to those in need. Here you can find more information about some of our recent work. Below we showcase the main benefits that organisations can gain from partnering with us.
Recently Time & Talents ran its first hackathon – an increasingly popular event where volunteers come together to solve problems collectively – at an away day being held by procurement consultancy 4C Associates. Some 120 employees, divided into five teams, spent around two hours utilising their wide-ranging professional skills to suggest innovative solutions to a variety of operational, financial and IT challenges faced by five local charities.
Each charity was invited to present a challenge for a team of volunteers to consider. The issues under discussion included improving the supply chain of a charity that distributes recycled school uniforms, reorganising the collection of data and its management for an organisation that supports people living with a lung condition, and coming up with a variety of ways to raise funds.
The volunteer consultants’ suggested solutions were all judged on creativity and, just as importantly, viability – and a winner declared. Going forward the teams will help the charities with implementation of their ideas over the next few months.
As a high impact activity where employee volunteers can make an immediate difference, the hackathon was judged a great success by all attending. The corporate volunteers enjoyed liaising with colleagues in a different way than they usually do at work. They enjoyed learning about the various charity projects and gained insight into the tight financial constraints and the challenges that charities have experienced throughout the pandemic and will continue to face in the immediate future. In turn, the charities received useful expert advice on issues that had hitherto seemed insurmountable.
Westminster offers a wealth of befriending programmes that provide support to housebound and vulnerable residents. In such programmes, volunteers make regular calls and in-person visits to the resident they are matched with. In real terms this activity only takes up to 30 minutes or an hour a week of the volunteer's time, yet it makes a great difference to the life of a lonely and isolated resident. In such befriending programmes you can choose to support young mothers, refugees, older people, people with dementia, or people with learning disabilities.
We also have a range of mentoring activities that aim to make an impact in the areas of education, employment, health and wellbeing, social engagement, and fundraising. You can choose to volunteer individually or in teams, to share your own personal knowledge or your specialist skills, and bring much needed help to local small charities in these difficult times.
Contact us for a chat and to receive more details by emailing the Time & Talents team.
In these challenging times, Time & Talents has developed a remote volunteering programme for all employees who are working from home so that they can support charities remotely with their professional skills and help the most vulnerable in the community.
In just a few hours, professional volunteers can provide crucial support to all types of charities, whether individually or as part of a small team with work colleagues. Here are a few examples of the ways our volunteers have been of assistance in the last few months:
Request the latest Remote Volunteering Opportunities List here and get involved!
We love volunteers who want to share their skills, everyone can make a difference to the local community. Whether volunteering as an individual or part of a team, employees can contribute professional skills developed through their careers or skills learned through personal interests.
In recent years Time & Talents has provided key support for charity staff, in the form of peer mentors, training workshops and trusteeships. For example, employee volunteers from financial software company Intuit shared their expertise with charity staff and volunteers by running a training session on Quickbooks. And employees from chocolate manufacturer, Godiva, provided workshops on how to use Excel for charity monitoring and reporting.
Employee-led workshops have also benefitted many local schools and colleges. Volunteers ran a variety of classroom sessions tailored to their interests and work experience and the learning objectives of the school, which resulted in strong outcomes.
Our volunteers also work directly with disadvantaged members of the community on issues such as unemployment, isolation and literacy. Employee volunteers enjoy contributing to digital inclusion by running IT support sessions for older people. Also making a high impact are employability sessions where volunteers support people getting back into work by helping them with their CV and practising interview skills, and offer career advice to students and six-formers.
Since 2016 when the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) was created from the merger of two other government departments, employees have benefitted from volunteering in team building activities. The number of volunteers participating increased tremendously and last year 247 employees at BEIS gave 1,072 hours of their time to support more than 2,000 community members in Westminster.
The sheer number of volunteers that BEIS can mobilise offers invaluable support to community organisations, particularly as third sector resources and funding dwindle. A large team will take only a few hours to complete a task requiring many pairs of hands, allowing charity staff to focus on the important work of supporting people.
In turn, volunteering together in a variety of practical activities helped BEIS staff develop stronger relationships with their colleagues.
For a number of years now volunteers from John Lewis, Westminster City Council and the department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy have teamed up with Westminster City School to support their year 7 pupils (aged 11 to 12) as reading mentors. These students arrive at the school with vastly differing levels of literacy, so this reading mentoring scheme aims to help them get to the level of their peers. Such support at the earliest stage of a student's secondary school career has a proven impact on later academic development. Among developed nations, the UK shows the clearest link between poor literacy and unemployment. The help that employee volunteers have given them will directly influence and contribute to the students' future achievements for many years to come.
I enjoyed the reading session and I have gained more confidence in my other lessons. My favourite book is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone; my mentor would be Professor McGonagall because she likes cats."
Elliott - student, Westminster City School reading mentee
The reading mentoring programme was a great success. Our pupils enjoyed reading and discussing their books with the engaging and friendly mentors. I saw them improve their comprehension and grow in confidence reading aloud."
Chris Chapman, Library Manager, Westminster City School
Time & Talents can tailor your employee volunteering to correlate directly with your business goals. For example, the Godiva Chocolatier company’s main focus last year was to support ‘women in the community’ as part of its annual ‘Godiva Gives’ project. We therefore organised plenty of volunteering opportunities at a range of women’s projects. Godiva teams prepared healthy snacks for a women’s group, painted and gardened for older women residents at a housing cooperative, as well as helping older women at a community hub use their mobile phones and tablets more effectively. Similarly, volunteers from file hosting service Dropbox wanted to celebrate International Women’s Day with a bake-off with the women at a local nursing home. We were happy to arrange it!
Another recent example of matching corporate social responsibility (CSR) goals with employee volunteering activities was a volunteer day for a media company, the Engine Group. One of the main CSR priorities for this firm is the environment, so we scheduled its volunteering day to take place on World Environmental Day. A team of 15 Engine volunteers spruced up the gardens at a dementia centre and planted new flowers in hanging baskets.
Employee volunteers often help out at projects directly supporting service users, thereby gaining great insight into the challenges faced. From tea dances for older people to IT support at a day centre, there’s always a project needing direct support. Volunteering at soup kitchens or foodbanks provides the chance of distributing food directly to people who struggle to afford everyday meals.
Time &Talents teamed up with the Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO) back in 2012 and have since worked closely with them to orchestrate their annual global volunteering month, helping their London-based staff to support Westminster-based organisations.
During last year’s volunteering month, Time & Talents supported several hundred PIMCO employees to volunteer for more than 20 projects. These included serving breakfast, painting, delivering skilled workshops on employability and digital inclusion support, as well as playing with children who attend the Portman Early Childhood Centre.
Time &Talents teamed up with the Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO) back in 2012 and have since worked closely with them to orchestrate their annual global volunteering month, helping their London-based staff to support Westminster-based organisations.
During last year’s volunteering month, Time & Talents supported several hundred PIMCO employees to volunteer for more than 20 projects. These included serving breakfast, painting, delivering skilled workshops on employability and digital inclusion support, as well as playing with children who attend the Portman Early Childhood Centre.
The Time & Talents team has been instrumental in connecting PIMCO with local charities and identifying engagement opportunities that have made a significant impact to the local community.”
Carolina Leite, Senior Associate, Corporate Responsibility Purpose PIMCO
The Time & Talents team has been instrumental in connecting PIMCO with local charities and identifying engagement opportunities that have made a significant impact to the local community.”
Carolina Leite, Senior Associate, Corporate Responsibility Purpose PIMCO
Below please find reference copies of this year's and earlier impact reports.