Professional bodies:  How to sign up

How do I sign-up as a Professional Body?

Professional bodies can register after clicking on the sign up button for Employers and Professional Bodies which will take them to an Association registration form. If an association is already in our records, some fields will auto-populate, so please check for accuracy/currency. Once the registration form is completed, the association can then upload its logo in order to generate a custom link to the ITF website that can be sent to members with an invitation to sign up as ITF volunteers.

When your organization is signed up – what will your employees and/or members need to do?

Your employees/members can register as volunteers using your association’s customized registration form where they will be asked to provide a few basic details, their email address and password and a few more details about themselves, and what they can offer as a volunteer.

They’ll be asked to select specialisms and activities that thy can volunteer for – currently these are:

Specialisms	Activities
Apprenticeships/ Traineeships Cadetships	Career Insight Talks and Events
Design and Manufacturing	Curriculum Link
Enterprise/Entrepreneurs	Help with Resumes and/or Realistic Mock Interviews
Financial Literacy	Exchanging Expectations
Maths – Using it at work	Reading or Numeracy
Science and Technology
Languages – French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Urdu, Arabic

In the ‘Your Profile’ section, they will be asked to list all memberships they hold in professional bodies/associations.  We will then link them to your association for future reporting purposes (should your organization be a sponsor) and also add your organization name to a list of dropdown options in that section for other members to select.

Schools will search for volunteers from their ’Find Volunteers’ page, based on the information volunteers provide. Private email addresses and phone numbers are not visible to either party.

Inspiring the Future Invitations

 Teachers will see the association logo on volunteers’ cards and then contact them via the portal to invite them to their Inspiring the Future event they have coming up. Having received the invite message containing the time commitment requested and the activity date (if defined), volunteers can reply to indicate if they are able to be involved or not and/or they can request further information. If necessary, ongoing conversations can take place regarding changes to availability, event logistics etc.

Feedback

Electronic feedback forms are automatically triggered to participants after the event. We ask a few questions of both volunteers and schools about how the event went. We strongly recommend that this is completed, as it allows us to keep an eye of the quality of volunteers and whether the service is working for both parties. We also use your feedback to report to funders, which will help to keep this service free to schools and volunteers. 

Planning and preparation

 Volunteers can expect invite messages from teachers in schools/colleges once they are matched in the system. When you are contacted you might want to talk about:

• Length: how long you can be with the students

• What topics you can cover and how can you best use your expertise

• The equipment available (if relevant)

Before the session

• Volunteers should arrive in good time before the session to give themselves the best opportunity to speak to the teacher and set up the room

• If a volunteer is going to be late or cancel an appointment, he/she needs to let the teacher know as soon as possible

• Volunteers need to know which member of staff will be with them during their visit

• Volunteers need to let the school know if they require a car parking space