The decoration could be awarded to efficient and thoroughly capable officers of proven capacity for long and meritorious service in the part-time Volunteer Force of the United Kingdom.

The award did not confer any individual precedence, but entitled the recipient to use the post-nominal letters VD.

[1] The Volunteer Officers' Decoration could also be conferred upon any of the Princes of the Royal Family of Great Britain and Ireland.

[1][3] The ribbon is dark green and 1+1⁄2 inches (38 millimetres) in width and is suspended from a silver bar-brooch decorated with an oak leaf pattern.

This version appears to have only been awarded in some Crown Dependencies, instead of the Volunteer Officers' Decoration for India and the Colonies.

[1][3][5][7][8] The Volunteer Officers' Decoration continued to be awarded in some colonies and Crown Dependencies (such as to officers of the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps in the Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda, with awards for this unit continuing even after its re-organisation on Territorial Force lines in 1921) until the Efficiency Decoration was instituted in September 1930.