Operations Volunteering Experience Coordinator

Guide Dogs - Be Part of Something Life‑Changing

Come and join us as a self‑motivated and purpose‑driven Operations Volunteering Experience Coordinator and be part of something life‑changing - helping people with sight loss live the life they choose.

As an Operations Volunteering Experience Coordinator at Guide Dogs, you’ll help ensure volunteers are set up for success by delivering a positive, engaging and rewarding volunteering experience. You’ll support volunteer recruitment, onboarding, training and ongoing development, helping to maximise volunteer retention and engagement across our Operations teams. The Operations Volunteering Experience Coordinator will be an expert in volunteer support and engagement, volunteer best practice, training coordination, and providing advice and guidance to ensure a consistent and high-quality volunteer experience. Our Operations Volunteering Experience Coordinators play a huge part in ensuring everything we do enables us to deliver on our purpose and exceed expectations.

Key Responsibilities

• Coordinate the volunteer journey across a range of Operations services, ensuring volunteers are recruited, onboarded and ready to support our life-changing work.
• Support volunteers from application through to placement, creating a positive, welcoming and efficient experience every step of the way.
• Work closely with operational teams to ensure volunteer resources are in place where and when they are needed, helping services run smoothly and effectively.
• Deliver and coordinate inductions, training and development opportunities, ensuring volunteers feel confident, prepared and supported in their roles.
• Build strong relationships with volunteers, providing guidance, regular communication and ongoing support to enhance engagement and retention.
• Use data, feedback and insight to continuously improve the volunteer experience, identifying opportunities to enhance processes, compliance and best practice.
• Champion volunteer recognition and inclusion, helping to create a positive volunteering culture where every volunteer feels valued for the difference they make.

You

You’ll have a supportive and collaborative approach to volunteer engagement and development. You’ll enjoy working in a people-focused environment with a dedicated focus on delivering an outstanding volunteer experience, building strong relationships and driving continuous improvement. Whilst being committed to inclusion, safeguarding and best practice, you’ll act with integrity and honesty in everything you do.

Skills and Competencies

• Educated to GCSE grade C or above in Maths and English or equivalent qualification.
• Experience of managing and supporting volunteers.
• Experience of implementing new working practices within a team.
• Proven experience of supporting and advising others on best practice and procedure.
• An understanding of good practice in volunteer management.
• Demonstrable and up to date knowledge of good practice in equality, diversity and inclusion. Demonstrable and up to date knowledge of GDPR and use of Customer Relationship Management systems.
• Relevant and up to date knowledge of safeguarding principles.

Benefits

We wouldn’t be able to change the lives of people with sight loss without our people. That’s why it’s important for us to provide a variety of benefits that reward our colleagues in a way that suits them and recognises the hard work and contribution that they make.

• 26 days annual leave. After three years of continuous employment, this increases to 28 days plus bank holidays.
• Real Living Wage Employer
• Flex pot - equal to a proportion of your annual salary to use on our wide variety of flexible benefits
• The option to buy and sell annual leave
• Discounts and cash-back scheme
• Excellent pension scheme (We will match your pension contributions plus 2% up to a maximum of 9% employer contribution)
• And lots more!

For high volumes of applications, we reserve the right to close adverts earlier than advertised.

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

Behind Every Guide Dog Is Someone Like You - We’re passionate about creating an inclusive workplace that celebrates and values diversity. Bring your whole self to work regardless of age, disability, gender identity or reassignment, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity, race, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation. We don’t want you to ‘fit’ our culture, we want you to enrich it. 

How to apply:

Further details on the full role are attached below. When you are ready to apply, submit an online application form via this page.  Please note - If you are successful you will need to provide evidence of your right to work in the UK via our digital ID checking supplier.  We cannot offer visa sponsorship at this time.

As part of your application ensure you provide evidence and examples of how your skills & experience meet the criteria as set out in the attached job description. You will also be asked to complete a few job-specific questions, so please be prepared to write your answers to these questions.

If you choose to use AI tools to assist in completing your application, please use them appropriately.  We value authenticity. If you want to stand out, using a generic AI-generated response isn’t going to separate you from the crowd. This is your time to shine and showcase your unique skills, personality, and thought processes!  You can find our full statement on the use of AI to complete applications on our careers website.

If you would like to have an informal conversation about the role before applying, or require any accessibility support to apply, our friendly recruitment team is ready and waiting to help. Call them on 0118 3540345 or drop an email to [email protected].

Safer recruitment:

Guide Dogs follow Safer Recruitment practices to ensure we are safeguarding the vulnerable people we work with. As part of this, we require a full work history with any gaps accounted for & a minimum of 2 professional referee details fully covering the past 5 years. If you are applying for a disclosure role, please note that you will be required to undergo an enhanced DBS check and sign up to the DBS update service.

At Guide Dogs, we believe in fair and equitable hiring practices. A criminal record will not automatically disqualify an applicant from consideration for a position. Each case will be evaluated individually. We encourage all candidates to disclose relevant information, and we assure you that it will be handled confidentially and fairly.