Why volunteer with us?
Share your skills and expertise to make a difference to charities in your local community.
Why volunteer with us?
Cranfield Trust volunteers generously share their time and expertise with charities across the UK, to help build confident and successful leaders and a stronger, more sustainable voluntary sector. Do you have the professional skills, experience and time to help us? Our support services are organised around four main services:
What are we looking for?
Our volunteer register includes CEOs, senior managers and functional experts in their field. Regardless of what roles they undertake for us, one thing that unites all our volunteers is that they have a wealth of knowledge and expertise that they can readily transfer to the charity sector in useful ways.
Knowledge, skills and abilities
Substantial professional experience with transferable business skills – You bring a wealth of experience and credibility to inform significant business decisions. You can support organisations in designing and redesigning services to enhance their sustainability, both now and in the future.
Ability to identify and address root causes – You have a talent for looking beyond surface-level issues to help charities understand and tackle the underlying challenges they face.
Capacity to work independently in the field – Your experience shows that you can operate autonomously and drive meaningful change independently.
Strong communication and interpersonal skills – You are skilled at engaging with others and bringing people along with you through clear and persuasive communication.
Open, approachable, and adaptable – You demonstrate empathy and can flex your approach to suit different audiences and situations.
We want the Trust to reflect the organisations we support and we welcome applicants from all parts of the community.
How we match volunteers to charities
We match volunteers to assignments according to their skills and availability. If you join our volunteer register we will ask you to complete a registration form, which holds detailed information on your business skills. We use this information to match you to assignments. Where we can, we will match you to a project near your home but, we also support charities remotely and may ask you to do this.
We value your time
We couldn't do what we do without the vital support of our 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 assignment, it just means we will contact you to ask if you are available to help, should a project come up that requires your skills or expertise. We quite understand if you have to say no – but just having you on our volunteer register helps us by holding a wide range of skills and volunteers available at different times.
"Cranfield Trust is an exceptional organisation. Their impact led approach ensures that both charity and volunteer get a good experience, with measured and positive outcomes. I would strongly recommend any charity that thinks it’s missing a skill or experience in their team to get in touch. And for volunteers, it is a truly rewarding experience being able to make an impact and seeing the change you can help to facilitate, is a very satisfying experience." Adam Walsh, Cranfield Trust Volunteer
Volunteer roles we can offer you
Volunteer Management Consultant
At Cranfield Trust, we believe in building stronger, more successful charities. Our volunteer management consultants offer tailored business advice and practical solutions to help charities overcome management challenges and thrive.
With the support of Regional Managers across the UK, our consultants work across four key business areas:
- Leadership and strategic direction – Including strategy development, business planning, governance and marketing.
- People management – Covering organisational structure, high-level HR processes, change management and facilitating mergers or collaborative working.
- Financial management and sustainability – Supporting process improvements, cost analysis, forecasting, and scenario planning.
- Performance and impact – Helping charities define KPIs, report on impact, and strengthen performance management.
The two areas of pro-bono management consultancy we do not offer support on are: ‘Functional HR’ – e.g. Advice covered by employment law and regulated advice – e.g. Investments, legal advice, property related advice.
Volunteer Mentor
Our mentoring service matches our skilled volunteer mentors with charity leaders to help improve their performance and build their confidence. Drawing on their proven mentoring skills, our volunteers are able to bring their own experience of successes and challenges to help charity leaders achieve their goals.
Peer-to-Peer Facilitator
Peer-to-peer Exchanges offer immense value to charity leaders, providing a safe and supportive group of charity leaders to explore challenges, share experiences, and discover solutions.
This is a specialist volunteer role, and we’re looking for individuals with specific knowledge and experience in action learning or similar peer-to-peer facilitation methods.
On Call Volunteer
Our On Call volunteers provide vital, short-term support to charity leaders who need quick, focused advice on specific challenges. Topics can range from financial guidance and governance issues to digital communications or signposting to other specialist resources.
The common theme is speed and impact—these volunteers work with charity leaders over just a few hours to help ‘break the logjam’ and move beyond an immediate obstacle.
How to apply and what happens next
We want to give you a great volunteering experience with the Trust and that means being able to give you an opportunity to get engaged. Volunteering for Cranfield Trust won’t be the right fit for everyone depending on where they are on their volunteering journey. We are well connected and if we think that your volunteering offer may be picked up more quickly elsewhere, we will let you know and signpost you.
If we are the correct fit for each other, then we will take you through a structured induction and explain how the Cranfield Trust will support you on this stage of your volunteering journey.
If you're interested...
Please send us your up to date resume/CV and a short statement in your own words as to why you would like to volunteer with Cranfield Trust and how your skills and experience can help the Trust and the charities we support.
Helping us in other ways
If none of the roles we've shared on this page feel like the right fit, your contribution may still lie in other valuable areas. There are many ways to support the Trust beyond project work.
We’re always looking for skilled volunteers who can help raise awareness of our work and extend our reach. As a fundraising charity ourselves, we also welcome support from those with experience in fundraising, donor engagement, or access to resources we need—whether financial, infrastructure, or tools.
You may also have networks that could help promote the work of the Trust and open new opportunities for collaboration and support.
Periodically we may also ask volunteers with particular skills or knowledge to help us prepare webinars or other information and guidance materials.
