Volunteer Management Consultants - Essex

Cranfield Trust volunteers share their time and expertise with charities based across the UK, to help build a stronger, more sustainable voluntary sector. Do you have the professional skills, expertise and experience to help us?

Pro bono Management Consultancy

At the Cranfield Trust, we believe in building successful charities. Our volunteer management consultants provide tailored business advice and solutions to charities to help them overcome the management challenges they face and to help them thrive.

We have project managers across the UK who, along with our volunteers, work with charities in their region to support four main areas of business:

1. Leadership and strategic direction - Governance, business planning, mentoring, and marketing.
2. People management - Organisational structure, recruitment and retention processes, merger and collaborative working.
3. Financial management and sustainability - Process improvements, understanding costs, forecasting and scenario planning.
4. Performance and impact - KPIs, impact reporting, and developing performance.

Volunteer matching

We match volunteers to projects on the basis of their skills, location and availability. When you join our volunteer register, we will ask for a copy of your CV plus a completed registration form, which holds detailed information on your business skills.

We use this information to match you to projects and also try to make sure you are working with a charity close to home or to your place of work.

We value your time

We couldn't do what we do without the vital support of our specialist volunteers. We understand how busy life can be with work and other commitments.

Joining our volunteer register does not commit you to any level of activity or a particular project, it just means we will contact you to ask if you are available to help, should a project requiring your area of expertise come up locally to you.

We are looking for people who can use their transferable business skills to support charities with everything from strategic planning to marketing, HR, IT, and financial management support. Our volunteer register includes CEOs and strategic leaders of national and multinational companies, who have many years experience and a wealth of business knowledge and expertise.

Cranfield Trust volunteers come with a wealth of commercial experience from both private and public sectors. Many are MBA alumni of our partner business schools, who have chosen to volunteer with us to benefit their local community.

Many of the charities we work with operate with few resources and a lot of goodwill from staff and supporters. Although our volunteers don't need any experience of working in the voluntary sector, we do need volunteers who are able to appreciate and empathise with the challenges charities are facing - lack of time, funding, resources and staff are all very common in the voluntary sector.

Skills, experience and attributes

• Professional/industry experience with transferable business skills.
• Educated to degree level or equivalent.
• Good communication skills.
• Open and approachable.

"I have been surprised by just how much of my own experience can be applied to the charity sector. Not only have I gained valuable experience and a better understanding of the challenges faced by charities, but also, at a personal level, it's been brilliant working with a team of people who are passionate about their cause."

- Paul Corcoran, Commercial Director, DeltaRail and Cranfield Trust volunteer consultant

We regularly get feedback from charities about the positive difference Cranfield Trust support has made. Here are just a few examples:

"An awesome session today with our business mentor Gary Metcalfe from Cranfield Trust, what an approachable and knowledgeable guy! New business model, here we come! It's heartening to see there are knowledgeable and experienced people out there willing to put something back with no benefit to themselves."

Juls Benson, CEO, Reality Theatre Group

"Working with the Cranfield Trust has been a very positive & rewarding experience, they helped us to take a look at what we deliver and why we do it and then went on to help shape and launch a very success business plan and strategy that is helping to significantly grow the business! We felt Off The Grid Adventures had an amazing future with so many exciting potential projects in the pipeline, but we were struggling a little with how best to turn a large number potential ideas into successful deliverable community projects. "

Paul Kirkpatrick, Project Director, Off The Grid Adventures

"I really can't thank Cranfield Trust enough; Michael has been so supportive throughout the transition into my new role as the first CEO of AMAT. Without the support of Cranfield Trust we wouldn't have thrived during our year of change management, and dealt with the pandemic. Michael has been a constant during that time. We are able to provide a better service by virtue of the fact that we're more secure financially, which has taken the focus off survival. We've been able to take huge strides in our service delivery and we have continued to demonstrate innovation."

Jodie Geddes, CEO, AMAT UK