Everyone has the right to volunteer without experiencing discrimination.

While volunteers are generally not covered by equal opportunities legislation, it is clearly good practice to include them in your equal opportunities and/or diversity policy. Ideally all your policies will have a commitment to equal opportunities and diversity. Restating your commitment to offering equal opportunity to volunteers from different backgrounds within your volunteer policy shows that you take the issue seriously and should indicate that all your organisation’s other policies have been written with inclusivity in mind.

Many organisations are now becoming aware of the benefits of having a diverse range of volunteers.  A diverse group of volunteers makes your organisation more welcoming to and more representative of the local community. Involving people from differing backgrounds, ages, cultures, genders and outlooks helps throw up new ideas and fresh approaches. Having a diversity policy in place helps move toward increasing the diversity of your volunteers.

Using an equal opportunities monitoring form can be used to show that people from all different types of backgrounds are being involved in your organisation.