SRC Volunteering Guide
Thank you for choosing to volunteer through your Students’ Representative Council (SRC). We’ve created this handy user guide to help you manage your profile, log your volunteering hours and skills, and to answer any questions you may have about volunteering during your studies.
Who is a volunteer?
We consider any University of Glasgow student who gives up their time freely, for the benefit of others, to be a volunteer. Examples include volunteering with a local charity, social enterprise, or community group; sports coaching; fulfilling a committee role or taking part in community and on-campus volunteering as part of your club or society; and undertaking your responsibilities as a classroom representative or elected student council member. By registering as a volunteer with us, you will receive support from our staff team and have access to your own unique profile, which you can use to keep a record of your volunteering and log any hours and skills acquired throughout your time at university.
How do I register as a volunteer?
Visit www.glasgowunisrc.org and make sure you are logged in:
Once you have logged in, head to the volunteering section of our website:
You will be prompted to complete some information to set up your volunteering profile:
How do I apply for a volunteering opportunity?
From the volunteering homepage, click ‘Browse Opportunities’. To find out a bit more information about each of our community partners, click ‘Browse Providers’:
From the ‘Browse Opportunities’ page, you can have a look through our list of community and campus volunteering projects and filter your search by location and category. If you find an opportunity of interest, click onto it for more information:
To apply for the opportunity, simply click ‘apply’ and you will hear back from us within a few days, with more information and to help you get started:
How do I log my volunteering hours and skills?
From your Volunteering Profile, click ‘Log Hours’:
Community and Campus Volunteering Roles
If you have applied for any volunteering opportunities through our website, these will appear underneath your Campus or Community Volunteering Roles (please note, these will only be listed once we have accepted your applications). Click ‘Include’ to add the opportunities to your profile, and hit the ‘+’ on the side of each opportunity to begin logging your hours and skills:
When logging your hours, you will be asked to submit a date and short description for your volunteering (please note, if you are unsure of the exact date or are bulk logging previous hours, choose an estimated date and write a brief note in your activity description – i.e., ‘GUSH shift volunteer, Oct 2019 – Jan 2020).
When adding a skill, you will be asked to select from a dropdown list of University Graduate Attributes and to provide an example of how you have developed this skill through your volunteering.
Volunteering Roles not listed by SRC Volunteering
Many of you will be continuing with volunteering opportunities you started before university or have sought out volunteering with a charity or organisation on your own and not included on our list of available opportunities. To add any additional volunteering roles to your profile, click to add a campus or community volunteering role and follow the instructions above to log any accumulated hours or skills:
Club or Society Committee and Community Volunteering
If you are a club or society committee member, or are taking part in community
and/or on campus voluntary work as part your club or society, you can click to ‘Add
Club or Society Volunteering Roles’:
Student Representative Volunteering
If you are a class representative or volunteering as a student representative within one of the student bodies, you can click to 'Add Student Representative' roles:
Sport Volunteering
If you volunteer as part of a GUSA club or within the local community, you can click 'Add GUSA Volunteer Role' or 'Add Sport Volunteering in the Community Role':
You can log your volunteering activities as and when you complete them, or log everything in the same entry on a weekly, monthly, or termly basis. For example, you could log all your committee meeting hours for semester one under the same entry. Just be careful to make this clear in the activity description. Examples of volunteering within your club or society include attending committee meetings; administrative duties such as sending emails and typing up minutes; attending society events and training sessions; and updating your club or society’s
social media channels.
Why should I log my hours and skills?
As well as being a great way to make new friends and have fun, volunteering is also a sure-fire way to enhance your employability by helping to ensure that you leave university with more than a degree. It’s important to us that your volunteering efforts are recognised and credited. We do this through the following reward schemes:
UofG Volunteering Awards
We've created our very own volunteering awards, to help you demonstrate the employability skills and experience you have gained as a volunteer to graduate employers. Any UofG student who gives up their time freely for the benefit of others - whether that's through an SRC Volunteering project or not - is eligible to receive one of our awards. This could be through volunteering with a local charity, sports coaching, fulfilling a committee role or taking part in community work as part of your club or society, or carrying out your role as a class representative or student council member.
Our award categories range from bronze to diamond. To receive one, you must log the following criteria:
- Bronze: 25hrs + 2 graduate attributes
- Silver: 50hrs + 4 graduate attributes
- Gold: 100hrs + 6 graduate attributes
- Platinum: 200hrs + 8 graduate attributes
- Diamond: 500hrs + 10 graduate attributes
Please click to view the University's Graduate Attributes Framework.
You must then submit a reflective log, telling us about your experience as a volunteer. You can do this via the 'Awards Progress' section on your profile. Once you have submitted your reflection, we will review your submission as soon as we can!
Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR)
The HEAR is an extended form of your traditional degree transcript, which you will receive upon graduating. It’s a formal way for the University to recognise your academic work and any extracurricular activities you’ve done during your time as a student. Volunteering opportunities that are HEAR eligible will be listed as such in their description.
If you hold the position of President, Vice President, Secretary, or Treasurer within your club or society, or are an eligible volunteer, we will contact you via email near the end of term and ask you to complete an application form. Please note, we can only process HEAR applications for SRC-affiliated projects. Internships, scholarships, and other academic related placements (incl. class representatives) are administered within your academic school, so please liaise with them directly.
Saltire Awards
The Saltire Awards are the Scottish Government’s way of celebrating, recognising, and rewarding the commitment, contribution, and achievements of young volunteers in Scotland. If you are aged 25 or under you are eligible for a Saltire Award, provided you have kept a log of your volunteering hours on your profile. We will process your Saltire certificate at the end of each academic year, if you have achieved the following volunteering milestones:
Volunteering, Clubs and Societies Awards (VCS)
Each year, we come together to celebrate the amazing achievements of our clubs, societies, and volunteers at our VCS Awards. The awards, hosted by our Vice President of Student Activities, give you the chance to put your peers forward for an award to celebrate all their hard work on campus and in the local community. Categories include GU Club or Society of the Year, GU Award for Community Volunteering, and the GU Principal’s Award for Civic Engagement. Students shortlisted for an award will receive a certificate and are invited to attend the ceremony for dinner and drinks, and the lucky winners will receive an award as well as a cash prize!
Download Hours Log and Skills Record
From your profile, in addition to logging your volunteering hours you have the option to ‘Download hours log’, ‘View skills record’, and ‘Download skills record’. These can be downloaded as PDF or Excel files and provide a handy snapshot of your logged hours and skills, which you can easily attach to a CV or hand over to a prospective employer.
