Before you get in touch with any organisations or schools or anyone within UCL you must speak to a member from our team - there might be something important to explain to you about that contact.

When developing your project plan, you will have established your aims and outcomes and determined who the beneficiaries of your project will be – for example older people or children. You then need to determine what type of organisation you would like to partner with so that you can work with these beneficiaries. This is because, for safeguarding reasons, your project beneficiaries must be recruited through your partner organisation.

Potential partners include:

  • Community groups – e.g. the local playgroup
  • Voluntary organisations – e.g. a homeless shelter
  • Council departments–e.g. Camden Youth Service
  • Health service–e.g. local doctors surgery
  • Schools

Requirements for Recruiting Partner Organisations

Our Student-Led Projects are only permitted to partner with certain types of organisations or schools.  When recruiting partner organisations for your Student-Led Project, please ensure that you follow the guidelines below: -

  • If your project wants to partner with charities or community organisations, you must only work with not-for profit organisations.  
  • If your project wants to work with educational institutions, you must only partner with state-funded schools, colleges or nurseries.  Our Student-Led Projects are not permitted to work with private schools or nurseries.
  • Volunteering Service Student-Led Projects must only partner with London-based organisations or schools.  This is because your project’s beneficiaries must be recruited through your partner organisation and we only reimburse travel expenses to volunteering sessions that take place within TfL Zones 1-6.  Also, if your volunteering sessions are not based in London, then it may be difficult for your volunteers to attend the volunteering sessions.

All project beneficiaries must be recruited through organisations that fulfil the criteria above. The only exceptions to these rules are for those organisations that are providing your volunteers with training or providing consultancy support for your Student-Led Project.  

A note on Faith and Campaigning Organisations

You should make sure that any organisations you work with – and, indeed, your own activities – comply with our policy on work with faith and campaigning organisations. If you have any questions about these policies, please feel free to reach out.

Faith Organisations
The Volunteering Service welcomes the opportunity to work with volunteering projects that are based within or set up by faith organisations. However, we cannot be involved with any project that is used in any way to recruit members - from their clients or their volunteers - to any religious organisation, nor any project that is used to promote the tenets of a particular faith.

Campaigning Organisations
The Volunteering Service welcomes the opportunity to work with campaigning organisations. We will not refer students to organisations that are closely connected with any political party.

You may also need other contacts within UCL – for example:

  • Acluborsociety
  • A particular department (for example, if your project will be of particular interest to art students, you could get in touch with the Slade).
  • UCL Volunteering Society may also be able to help.

Contacting partner organisations

  • Do some research in advance of making initial contact to find out who is the correct person to liaise with, from the organisation.
  • Be clear and polite in all of your communications. Ensure that you sound persuasive and reassuring, without making extravagant claims. You need to be professional without being stilted.
  • Compose your email and feel free to send us a draft as we will be happy to go through it.
  • Send the email giving it a clear heading. Always copy in your Project Supervisor when emailing community organisations. Then, if you have not heard back within 3 working days, phone the person you have emailed. Persistence at this point is vital if you want to get your project off the ground. The person you want to contact will be very busy with other things and many organisations may be operating at a reduced capacity as a result of the pandemic. Not getting a response from them does not necessarily mean they are not interested in your project. So follow your email up! Be prepared to leave a message for them with the receptionist or administrator and ask them if you should forward the email to them too so that they can remind the person themselves.
  • If after your follow-up work the person still has not contacted you then let us know. Similarly, if they do not wish to work with you let us know and we’ll be able to suggest other people to approach.
  • Ensure that your email is clear and concise.  Staff are usually very busy so it is important that they obtain all the information needed to make a decision about whether to work with your project quickly.  Avoid including unwarranted praise, which can make the email too long and could potentially be off putting to some individuals.

Remember – when contacting community organisations you should be

  • Professional 
  • Polite
  • Patient
  • Persistent

Once you’ve agreed your project will work with the community partner, you will need to complete our Partnership Agreement Form.

Sample email to a school

Dear Mr Leominster,

My name is Anna Smith and I'm co-project leader of a student-led volunteering initiative called Art Sparks, run with the help of the Volunteering Services at University College London. I'm emailing you to see if your school would be interested in our project.

Our group works within primary schools with children aged between 7 and 11 years. We provide exciting art activities for children, in small groups led by our enthusiastic student volunteers. I’ve attached some of our sample lesson plans from last year.

The project has been running successfully for two years, during which we’ve received very positive feedback from the school we’ve worked with, St. Bernard’s School in Islington and grove Road school in Camden. We are now aiming to expand the project to a third school, as we’ve had a lot of interest from student volunteers.

At St. Bernard’s, we came to the school every Wednesday afternoon during the Spring term and worked with the Year 5 class. At Grove Road School we ran a week of activities across the school in late May. If you were interested in working with us, we could use either approach, or discuss how we might try something different to meet the needs of your school.

As I’ve mentioned above, we are supported by the Volunteering Services at UCL. They will arrange DBS checks and collect references for our volunteers and are an additional point of reference for you. I have copied my supervisor at the Volunteering Service, Cynthia Allen, into this email.

I really hope that your school will be interested in the above sessions. If possible, I would like to arrange to meet up with you to discuss this further. You can contact me by email at [email protected] or phone me on 08567 345811.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Anna Smith, UCL Art Sparks Co-Leader 2018-19

Writing an advert

You can also write an advertisement for the Student-Led Project Partners' Newsletter to help you with recruitment. This Newsletter is sent monthly to current and potential partner organisations to inform them about the Student-Led Projects that are looking to partner up. It is a great way of reaching a lot of organisations at once!

If you would like to place an advert in our SLP Partners’ newsletter, please email [email protected] a description of your project including:

  1. The aim of your project/ a brief description of what your project is about.
  2. What activities will be delivered and how they will be delivered.
  3. Whether your project is targeting specific groups e.g., primary school children, young people aged 11-16, older people, people with disabilities.
  4. What the beneficiaries (people your project will be working with) will gain from participating in your project.

(Maximum of 150 words)

Examples:

Light Bulb Club
An educational project aimed at children aged 9-11, providing two online workshop sessions per week to cultivate non-academic soft skills including creativity, critical thinking, and sense of responsibility towards society. Our curriculum and textbooks are originally designed by our volunteers. We also provide an opportunity for cross-cultural communication as students connect with like-minded peers in Shanghai, China during sessions.

Origami Volunteering Project
The UCL origami volunteering project is an established student-led volunteering program. The project has been welcomed by children in hospitals for many years and in 2019 we began volunteering with schools. The project aims to provide time and space for children to engage in a positive activity, where we teach origami pieces. From origami stars to dinosaurs, it is a relaxing and bonding activity for the volunteers and children. For your school, this project will involve a small group of UCL students, led by a project leader, organising one or two sessions between February and March. The origami session will be 1-2 hours long. The age range of our participants is primary and secondary school children!

UCL Sexpression
Part of the wider charity Sexpression:UK (registered charity number 1166559), UCL Sexpression is a student-led relationship and sexual health education (RSE) programme. UCL was the first branch founded in 2000 by medical students; now there are over 25 branches nationwide at universities across the UK. We aim to provide quality, up-to-date information on sexual health and relationships, to empower young people. We believe the best way to provide inclusive and comprehensive RSE is through near-peer teaching sessions delivered by university students equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to deliver interactive and engaging sex education sessions in secondary schools (for students aged 11-18). We are offering sessions up until March 25th, 2022, on the following topics: Bodily Changes, Safe Sex and Contraception, Sex and Consent, Sex and the Media, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, Relationships and Abuse.

If you have any questions regarding recruiting partner organisations or any of the information on this page, please email [email protected]

Last updated 2 weeks ago Read time 8 mins