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Volunteering Development Officer

Employer
Shelter
Location
Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle, Merseyside, Birmingham, Bristol, Plymouth or Bournemouth
Salary
£32,758 pa plus excellent benefits
Closing date
9 May 2021

Job Details

Do you have a proven ability to support and develop a volunteering programme and experience of delivering innovative volunteer development projects that enhance volunteer engagement? Then join Shelter in the brand new role of Volunteering Development Officer at one of the above locations and you could soon be playing a vital role in ensuring that all of our volunteers have a truly quality experience.

About Shelter
A home is a fundamental human need, as essential as education or healthcare. Yet millions of people across Britain struggle on a daily basis with homelessness, bad housing conditions, soaring rents, discrimination and the threat of eviction. So, we are striving for change, with individuals, in communities, across society, and leading the way to a safe home. We need ambitious, best-in-class individuals who are passionate about our cause to join us at this exciting time. This is your chance to play a part in the fundamental change we are striving to achieve.

At Shelter we are united by our purpose to defend the right to a safe home. Our enemy is the social injustice at the core of the escalating housing emergency. We believe that to win that fight, we must be representative of the people we are here to help and those who support our movement for change. In all our people decisions, we take pride in being inclusive, fair, equitable and transparent.

We have committed to combat racism both within and outside Shelter and welcome you on our journey to becoming a truly anti-racist organisation.

About the team
Our Volunteering Team sits within a People Directorate that engages more than 2,500 volunteers in our shops, Hubs and local communities. As well as supporting the mobilisation of volunteers to deliver Shelter’s strategic priorities, the team provides the infrastructure and insight that enables that mobilisation. Volunteers are a vital part of our growing movement for change and we’re passionate about the positive impacts of volunteering for both individuals and organisations. Over the next financial year, we’ll deliver an ambitious Volunteering Plan that will develop the quality of the volunteering offer. This is your chance to be part of our exciting volunteering vision for the future.

About the role
You’ll play a big part in implementing our Volunteering plan by leading on and delivering key volunteering projects and supporting volunteer engagement across the organisation. The role comes with a broad and flexible remit to harness opportunities and deliver maximum impact too. For example, we’ll look to you to advise on the development of new volunteer roles that will ensure positive experiences for volunteers at Shelter. You’ll also be responsible for creating appropriate resources and processes that empower teams to engage and support volunteers. Building positive relationships with key stakeholders so that volunteering infrastructure and resources are established to meet their needs will be vital too. And, when it comes to facilitating learning to further develop our volunteering culture or heading up elements of volunteer communications and engagement initiatives, again, we’ll count on you.

We are happy to talk about flexible working, personal growth, and to promote a workplace where you can be yourself and achieve success based only on your merit.

About you
You’ll need  an inclusive and innovative approach to volunteer engagement and experience of applying best practice principles in areas like recruitment, managing risk, induction and training, communication and consultation/feedback. The ability to lead on volunteering development projects using a project management approach, whilst planning and delivering your own workload is essential. What’s more, you’ll need the creativity and communication skills it takes to manage stakeholder relationships and influence teams to develop volunteering and champion volunteering internally, adapting your style as necessary for different audiences. You’ll also need experience of providing advice and guidance that empowers teams to engage volunteers, plus a flair for designing, planning and facilitating training and devising resources and/or digital tools to support the development of those best practice approaches.

Benefits
We offer a wide range of benefits, including 30 days of annual leave, enhanced family friendly policies, pension and interest free travel loans. Our employees also have access to a tenancy deposit loan, payroll giving, cycle to work scheme and an employee assistance programme.

Shelter helps millions of people every year struggling with bad housing or homelessness through our advice, support and legal services. And we campaign to make sure that, one day, no one will have to turn to us for help. We’re here so no one has to fight bad housing or homelessness on their own.

To find out more about the role and the benefits of working for Shelter please visit our website. Apply to be part of our team and be the change you want to see in society.

Safeguarding is everyone's business. Shelter is committed to protecting the health, wellbeing and human rights of those we support, and enabling them to live free from harm, abuse and neglect. All our staff will be expected to observe professional standards of behaviour and conduct their work in line with our Safeguarding Policies.

Shelter does not accept unsolicited CVs from external recruitment agencies nor accept the fees associated with them.

Company

The housing crisis is now a national emergency.

Shelter was founded 52 years ago, not by the wealthy or powerful, but as a community organisation whose purpose was to change society. That means we’re needed more now than at any time in our history: for millions of our fellow citizens the fundamental human need for a safe home is ignored.

Forget finding who’s to blame for this. Shelter is here to do far more than just point out what’s gone wrong. We are here to put it right, and that’s why our aim is for this strategy to be nothing less than a turning point for both Shelter and our country.

Without a home, no one can achieve their full potential. With millions whose right to a home is under threat, neither can the country. We believe that because the need for a home is so all-consuming, a home is a basic moral right, and everything we will do from now will be done to defend that right.

We’ve all talked so much about the ‘housing crisis’ that we’ve stopped believing it can be solved. The phrase has become like wallpaper. But this is a national emergency, and one that demands fearless, ambitious action.

In developing this strategy, it’s been vital to start with our own people: those who rely on our services, our volunteers, our employees. We aim to rebuild a movement, stronger than ever, and a movement must start with a simple idea that unites everyone within Shelter, our best advocates. Change starts here, in our work with individuals, spreading through communities, and across society.

We identify in this strategy six million households whose right to a home is either denied or under threat at this very moment. Soaring rents that squeeze out food and clothing, being thrown out of your home through no fault of your own, simply being too poor to afford a home: the terror of homelessness is everywhere.

Many are living in grossly unfit and unsafe conditions, adults and children whose lives are blighted by fear and despair. Discrimination is rampant in private renting and we have lost sight of the simple fact that we need a home just as much as we need healthcare and education. We are building the fewest social homes in 70 years, at a time when more and more people desperately need them.

In Shelter’s services, our people work tirelessly to alleviate the sheer destitution they see day in and day out. We will be a rock in the storm every day for those who need us. But our aim is bigger – to cut this suffering off at source – and we acknowledge in this strategy that we can’t do it overnight, neither can we do it alone.

For the first time, Shelter is committing in this strategy to ten-year goals as well as three-year goals so we can be confident of building to the necessary changes over the next decade. And at the same time we commit in this strategy to building the movement of people who will make this change possible.

We plan in the next three years to have 500,000 supporters join us in our mission to respond to this emergency, through campaigning, volunteering and donating. It is people that can power the change we seek.

This national emergency has been decades in the making. Now is the moment to act together with one purpose. In the community, our hubs and shops will be magnets for everyone with a role in ending the national emergency. Nationally, we will work with everyone who sees the desperate need for change: no one group or party is to blame for the emergency, and no one group or party can end it either.

Shelter: it’s a fundamental need and a basic moral right. Please join us to defend it.

Polly Neate, Chief Executive

Helen Baker, Chair

Company info
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