Grants and Fundraising Volunteer

Get involved in our therapeutic service, and you'll gain satisfaction from knowing that you're helping children, young people, and their families to continue to safely explore their experiences by making a real difference to our sustainability.

This is a fantastic opportunity to get involved in the ongoing development of Cocoon Kids - Creative Counselling and Play Therapy CIC. Our vital not-for-profit therapeutic service for priority children and young people, and their families depends on our financial resilience. By volunteering as Grants Officer you can help our CIC grow and develop to our next stage by ensuring that we have the funds to sustain and develop the service, and help us to realise our ambition of being a service for our community and beyond.

We're urgently looking for a volunteer who helps us to successfully fundraise for our community interest company. We need help to:

• Researching, registering and applying for appropriate sources of funding
• Planning Funding Projects and matching these to available funding opportunities that match our aims
• Ensure that proposed projects are in line with Cocoon Kids CIC's overall development plans
• Building and maintaining good working relationships with funders, grant and award makers, and our Directors and volunteers, in readiness for making grant applications
• Gathering copies of all the key documents needed for making grant applications, for example, governing documents, CIC structure, annual accounts, letters of recommendation etc.
• Completing and submitting grant monitoring & evaluation forms in a timely manner.
• Prepare grant use and any update reports ready for submitting to funders in a timely manner
• Attending workshops, information sessions, seminars etc. to build knowledge and experience of available grants and good practice
• Creating newsletters to broadcast any funding we receive.

Make this role your own - we're a responsive organisation, we'll be glad to listen to your great ideas

Why apply?

Join us, and you'll be part of our small, friendly team. You'll be able to organise your time around your own schedule, whilst making a real and immediate difference to children, young people and families in difficult times.

What are we looking for in a volunteer?

We would love a volunteer who:

• Has the ability to quickly understand the needs and challenges faced by our organisation
• Can quickly understand our financial set up/main concerns
• Has accurate and up to date knowledge and experience of community interest company, charity finance (as we're looking to convert to a CIO), SORP and other relevant frameworks
• Is aware of/is willing to inform themself of the latest government support packages, e.g. post Covid-19. pupil premium/ catch-up program
• Can help us get to grips with relevant options, approaches and strategies, and discuss next steps
• Will follow up with any further questions or outcomes.

Skills

• Self-motivated and able to work on your own initiative
• Knowledge of funders and how to match project plans with potential funds
• Experience of completing grant applications, monitoring and evaluating projects and preparing reports
• Good, clear communication skills, with ability to write in a way that matches funding brief
• Experience of working to deadlines
• Grant and funding accounting and/or financial management knowledge
• Ideally, be committed to being involved in a grant application/project from start to finish.

Specific skills and experience

We expect all of our team to have knowledge and experience in the following areas:

• Mental health and wellbeing challenges and its impact.
• Living with or have experience of socio-economic deprivation and/or marginalised communities
• Understanding of the impact that housing insecurity may bring to a child, young person and their family's mental health and wellbeing.

You'll have the opportunity to make a real and tangible difference to the lives of priority children, young people and families. You'll make sure families can access fully-funded and appropriate longer-term sessions- for as long as is therapeutically right for them, providing long-term positive mental health equity and outcomes and improved social mobility. Ultimately, you'll be ensuring our long-term sustainability beyond the challenges of Covid-19 and the cost of living crisis, growing our service from local, to regional and beyond.

Please apply through Reach in the first instance, by detailing why you are interested in this role and your relevant experience.

Please contact us via Reach with any questions. Interviews will be an informal Zoom chat with our Directors.

We look forward to hearing from you, Helene and the Cocoon Kids CIC team.