Recruiting other Project Leaders

Our experience shows that the workload on Student-Led Projects is too great for just one person, so we recommend that you have at least 2 Project Leaders for your Student-Led Project. If you are just starting and need to find a co-leader, consider:

  • Asking your friends
  • Asking around your department
  • Writing an advert for the Volunteering Service newsletter and website
  • Designing a poster to put up around college

Once you’ve got potential new recruits, remember to:

  • Be clear about what commitment you’re asking them to make
  • Decide how regularly you are going to meet

You may find people who are willing to take on specific tasks, without actually becoming a Project Leader. Don’t turn them away - these are your first volunteers!

The difference between a Project Leader and a volunteer is that the Project Leader takes on a management responsibility for ensuring that tasks get done. They might do some of the tasks themselves, or they might ask a volunteer to do them.

If you are not planning to continue with your Project Leader role, next academic year, but you still want your project to continue, you will need to find new Project Leaders during term 2. It is useful to take this into account from the start, since the easiest and most efficient way to do this is to recruit from your pool of volunteers! You can find more information about this in the Wrapping up page.

Volunteer recruitment strategies

Some things you can do to make your volunteer recruitment easier and more effective are:

  • Speak directly to other UCL students and get them to spread the message. Research has shown that word of mouth is the best method of volunteer recruitment.
  • Include your project in the Volunteering Service Newsletter. Here is some guidance on Writing Volunteer Recruitment Adverts.
  • Attend one of our Volunteer Fairs. See some guidance on how to recruit volunteers at the Volunteering Fairs. Project Leaders are notified about the dates of our Fairs through the monthly Project Leader Bulletin.
  • Complete your project’s homepage on the Student-Led Projects Online Platform – this will advertise your project in our online directory. The SLP Webpage User Guide has information on how to do this (look at the "Editing information about your project" section).
  • Creating volunteering opportunities for your SLP Webpage (see the "Creating new volunteer opportunities" section in the SLP Webpage User Guide).
  • Have a stall on campus. You can request this by emailing slvpadmin@ucl.ac.uk. Please keep in mind that your project needs to have an approved Risk Assessment for this to be authorised (you should only start recruiting volunteers once you have an approved Risk Assessment in any case!).

You can also consider these alternatives:

  • Volunteering Society – might be able to promote your project to their members.
  • Clubs and Societies – could your project be of interest to members of a particular club or society? If so, we can put you in touch with them.
  • UCL departments – are you trying to recruit students from a particular course – for example, law or medicine? We can ask departmental administrators to send an email to their department’s students
  • Write an article for Pi Magazine.
  • Use social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). You must follow our Social Media Guidance if you plan to use this recruitment strategy.

Keep in mind that the address details of your volunteering activities should not be shared on public advertising or social media pages.  If for some reason you identify a need to publicly share the address details of where the volunteering will be taking place, this needs to be approved by the partner organisation in advance of the address being shared.

Selection process

Whatever system you use to decide who should or shouldn't volunteer with you, it should be transparent, treat everyone equally and fairly, and it should be appropriate for your project. In particular, you’ll need to decide:

  • Can anyone volunteer with you, or are there qualities, skills or previous experiences that people must have?
  • How will you select?
  • How many volunteers will you need?

It is also important that you write a clear description of each volunteer role that your project has and, if you are selecting, what the criteria are. You should only pick volunteers based on your criteria.

Selection by interview

If you decide to interview prospective volunteers, you’ll need to draw up a list of questions and ensure that all applicants are asked the same ones. You’ll also need to book rooms (if in person) and decide who’ll be doing the interviewing.

Selection by application

If you decide to have a written application process, you’ll need to decide whether there will be a structured series of questions, or if you’ll ask applicants to provide a CV and a written statement.

If you’d like any advice, please book a meeting with one of our advisors.

After selecting volunteers

Once you have recruited your volunteers, you should register them in your SLP Webpage and make sure that they get the appropriate training and inductions. Please find below some useful resources:

Also, you should think about which strategies you'll use in order to motivate and retain the volunteers that you have recruited! See the Volunteer Motivation and Retention page for guidance.

Recruiting your successors

It is never too early to start thinking about who your successors will be and if you want your project to continue, next academic year, it is best to start planning now. 

Your selected pool of volunteers will be the best way to recruit new leaders and you can start preparing them for this position from the start by offering opportunities to take on roles with more responsibility, such as Team Leader, and mentoring them throughout the course of the academic year.  Putting plans in place early on, before your volunteers start concentrating on their exams, will support you with the recruitment of new Project Leaders later on!

You can decide the best method of recruitment but must ensure that the process is fair and you should aim to recruit next year’s Project Leaders by the end of March of the current academic year.

Even if your project is not delivering volunteering activity yet, it is essential that you start thinking about recruiting next year’s Project Leaders, if you would like your Student-Led Project to continue next academic year. 

If you don't have any volunteers currently or if you need any support to recruit new Project Leaders, get in touch, we can support you through the Project Leader Recruitment Campaign. You might also want to use some of the same techniques you used for your volunteer recruitment.

You can use the Checklist-Running a Student-Led Project to keep track of the steps you need to follow!

Last updated 5 months ago Read time 6 mins