The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service is billed as the MBE for volunteer groups. Now its custodians are looking for more groups to win Her Majesty’s seal of approval.

Started in 2002, in her Golden Jubilee year, the prestigious award has been bestowed on hundreds of hard working voluntary groups around the country. But according to the people behind it, many groups here in Oxfordshire still don’t know it exists.

Awarded to organisations regardless of their size and stature, and purely on the difference they make to their communities, the Queen’s Award starts with a nomination, followed by two rigorous inspections and finally the approval of the Queen herself.

It may not be an easy accolade to win, but it is worth the trouble, according to the Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, Tim Stevenson.

He said: “The main reason for entering this award is that if you win, it is like having the Queen’s seal of good housekeeping for your organisation.”

Mr Stevenson heads a working party which vets prospective winners.

He said: “The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service is not easy to win but that makes it even more valuable.

“Selection is a two-tier process. This starts when someone makes a nomination to the Cabinet Office, who then send it back to the Lieutenancy. A small group, including myself, go into the organisation and basically crawl all over it, judging it against the Queen’s Award criteria.

“We then go back to the Cabinet with our findings and phase two begins, whereby a high-powered committee look at the nominee to see if they think it is making a real difference to its community. Only then can they receive the award and use its marque on their publicity materials.”

Mr Stevenson added: “Being able to use the Queen’s Award marque is a huge honour and tells people you are a group which means business and is doing a really good job. Plus it can help a lot with your fundraising.”

Homeless charity the Oxford Gatehouse project was one of the earliest winners of the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, in 2003.

And its volunteers were amazed to find they had the added honour of appearing in the Queen’s Speech that Christmas.

Project director Andrew Smith said: “The Gatehouse is very proud of the fact that it was one of the very first winners of the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service.

“It meant a lot to the many members of the community who volunteer in our cafe for homeless people to know that their efforts were recognised at the highest level.

“And those ‘guests’ who use our services – computers and art classes as well as food and clothes – took pride in getting the award, too.

“We had a three-second slot in the background to the Queen’s Christmas speech that year, which was seen all over the world!”

A basement room in Oxford’s St Michael’s Street, the Gatehouse was started by the churches of central Oxford as a Christmas emergency shelter in 1988, and still gets much of its support from them. As many as 200 volunteers help regularly, serving free food, chatting with the guests and helping with the washing up, supported by a small team of permanent staff.

Oxford Friend won the award in 2008. The group offers free and confidential information, support and counselling services for lesbians, gay men and bisexuals.

Co-ordinator Gordon Langford said: “What made us unusual as winners of the award is that we are a solely voluntary organisation; we have no paid staff, only people with day jobs who give up their weekends and evenings to help others, but that also shows that the award recognises all voluntary groups. We have seen many benefits as winners. Using the award logo and winning itself raised our profile and helped us double our number of service users.”

The latest recipient, this year, was Didcot-based HTV Circles, a voluntary group working with sex offenders living in the community, assisting statutory agencies and monitoring behaviour.

Operations manager Dominic Williams said: “We have around 60 volunteers working with us here in Oxfordshire, alongside a team of specialists. We recruit, vet and train our volunteers and then a group of four will form a ‘circle’ with a sex offender, supporting and monitoring them to prevent them from re-offending.

“We have been working across Hampshire and the Thames Valley since 2002 and since then we have formed 70 circles, during which time only one guy has been re-convicted. That is largely due to the excellent work of our volunteers.

“Winning this award is testament to that.”

  • To find out more about the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, nomination criteria, and how to make a nomination go to direct.gov.uk/thequeensaward forvoluntaryservice