Sometimes you need advice. Sometimes you need someone to roll up their sleeves and help make things happen. With over a decade of experience in volunteering and programme leadership across the charity sector, I work alongside organisations to strengthen programmes, improve systems, turn strategy into action and provide experienced support when your team needs it.
Practical, hands-on support for volunteering, youth and community programmes.
Drawing on more than ten years of experience across volunteering, youth work and the charity sector, I help organisations develop programmes, improve systems, solve problems and add experienced capacity when it's needed.
No two organisations, programmes or communities work in quite the same way, so I don't believe in dropping in with a ready-made solution.
I work alongside your team to understand what's happening in practice and provide the right mix of advice and hands-on support — whether that's improving a programme, untangling a CRM, developing new processes or stepping in to help deliver the work.
Whatever the project, my approach is inclusive, trauma-informed and person-centred, building on the knowledge already within your organisation and putting the people who experience your programmes and services at the heart of the work.
Practical support to improve your programme, from recruitment and onboarding to safeguarding, accessibility, engagement and the overall experience of the people involved.
Sometimes a programme doesn't need completely reinventing. It just needs the time, space and outside perspective to look properly at what's working, what's getting in the way and what could be better.
I can work alongside your team to review the whole programme or focus on a particular part of it. That might mean looking at recruitment and onboarding, mapping the journey people take through your programme, reviewing safeguarding and safer recruitment, improving accessibility, or simplifying processes that have become more complicated over time.
Importantly, I don't just want to hand you a report telling you what could change. Where useful, I can help you actually make those changes too — rewriting forms, developing processes, creating resources, redesigning journeys or working with your team to put new approaches into practice.
The aim is a programme that works better for the people experiencing it and the people delivering it, making your volunteer programme feel more inclusive, accessible and smooth and free up time and resource in your organisation.
This could include:
Make your volunteer community part of how your organisational strategy happens — not something that sits separately from it.
Volunteering shouldn't sit separately from your organisational strategy. Your volunteer community can be a huge part of helping you achieve it.
If you're developing or launching a new strategy, I can work with your team, trustees and volunteers to explore what it means for volunteering — and how volunteers can actively contribute to your organisation's ambitions.
This could start with a focused workshop bringing the right people together to explore your strategic priorities through a volunteering lens. What are you trying to achieve? Where could volunteers contribute? What needs to change? What new opportunities could you create?
Or it can become a longer-term project where we turn those conversations into action. We might develop new volunteer roles and opportunities, rethink your volunteer journey, involve volunteers in shaping new areas of work, review the systems and processes needed to support growth, and develop an embedded approach to volunteering that evolves alongside your organisation.
The aim isn't simply to put volunteering into the strategy, but to turn your organisation's ideas and plans into action through your volunteer community.
This could include:
Your CRM should work for your programme, your team and the people using it, rather than creating more work for everyone. I can help you get there.
Your CRM or volunteer management system should make running your programme easier. But systems evolve, teams change and quick fixes pile up. Before long, you can end up with clunky forms, duplicated processes, data nobody uses and features nobody realised were there.
I can spend focused time getting under the bonnet of your existing system and, importantly, understanding how it connects to the programme around it.
I'll look at how your team actually uses the system, the journey volunteers or participants experience, what information you're collecting, what you're able to report on and where processes could be simpler.
From there, I can identify quick wins and longer-term improvements, and help implement them rather than leaving you with another list of things to do, including upskilling your team.
I've worked hands-on with systems including Better Impact, Salesforce, Upshot and custom-built CRMs, but the focus isn't on any one platform. I look at how your systems, processes and people work together and can also help you understand what you actually need if you're considering a change.
This isn't really about making a CRM prettier. It's about making your people, processes and technology work together.
This could include:
Turn an idea into a programme, service or volunteering offer that's practical, inclusive and ready to actually deliver.
Got the beginnings of an idea but need help turning it into something that actually works?
I can work alongside your organisation to develop new programmes, services and volunteering opportunities from the early thinking through to practical delivery.
That might mean working out who the programme is for and what you want it to achieve, consulting with the people who will experience it, developing roles and journeys, thinking through safeguarding and accessibility, choosing the right systems, creating forms and resources, or getting the first phase of delivery up and running.
Because my work combines programme development with hands-on delivery experience, I'm interested in what happens after the lovely planning document is finished. Who is going to do what? What does someone experience when they join? What information do you need? Where could things go wrong? And what needs to exist before you can actually launch?
Inclusive, trauma-informed and person-centred practice is built into that process from the beginning rather than added as an accessibility check at the end.
This could include:
Experienced, hands-on programme support when your team is stretched, you're between hires or something simply needs getting done.
Sometimes you don't need a consultant to tell you what to do. You need another experienced person who can come in and help do it.
I can join your team for a defined period to provide additional capacity during vacancies, busy periods, organisational change, new programme launches or when an important project simply isn't getting the time it needs.
Depending on what you need, I can take ownership of a specific project or work more broadly alongside your existing team. That could mean programme management, volunteer recruitment, service delivery, safeguarding support, stakeholder relationships, systems improvement or getting a backlog of development work moving.
I'm comfortable getting to know an organisation quickly, working within existing systems and processes, and balancing keeping things moving now with making sensible improvements for whoever takes the work forward.
Support can be a few focused days, a regular day or two each week, or a defined period of interim or embedded support.
This could include:
Turn your volunteer data into useful insight. I'll explore what's happening across recruitment and retention, identify patterns and opportunities, and give you practical recommendations for what to do next.
Your volunteer data can tell you a huge amount about what's working… if you have the time to actually dig into it.
I can analyse your existing volunteer data and turn it into a clear, accessible report exploring what's happening across your recruitment and retention.
That could mean looking at where applications are coming from, who's progressing through recruitment, where people are dropping out, how long different stages are taking, who you're successfully reaching, how long volunteers stay involved and where there might be opportunities to improve the experience.
I'll bring the numbers together with an understanding of volunteering and volunteer behaviour, helping you move beyond what is happening to start thinking about why it might be happening and what you could do differently.
You'll come away with a full report as well as a visual, easy-to-understand snapshot highlighting key findings, patterns and practical recommendations — something you can use with your team, leadership or trustees to inform what happens next. You can see an example of the snapshot below.
This could include:
If you’re interested in learning more but not ready to jump straight into the training or toolkits, then sign up for news and updates in the link at the bottom of each page of the Inclusive Volunteering site, or follow me, Maria on LinkedIn
Want to know more about our services and how we might be able to work together to make your organisation more inclusive and trauma-informed? Then send an email using the contact form below and I’ll be in touch.