Project Officer

Good Neighbours Newcastle aims to match local volunteers with socially isolated people who need task-specific support to stay healthy and engage with their community. Over the last year, our team of 76 volunteers have supported more than 200 individuals and logged 900+ volunteer hours. At present, we are receiving more than 1 new referral a day to the service, showing there is clear demand for the impactful support that Good Neighbours volunteers can bring.

We are now looking to recruit a volunteer Project Officer to support the continued growth and delivery of the project. This role has come about because:

• We would love to increase our administrative capacity to be able to recruit more volunteers and ensure that every isolated individual who requests support is able to be matched to a suitable volunteer
•  we see a big part of our organisation's mission being to provide an enjoyable and meaningful volunteer experience. This role will bring with it significant responsibility and opportunity to develop professional skills, and we see it as an opportunity to invest in you and your future
• As a Project Officer, you’ll have the opportunity to take on a significant level of responsibility and get involved in many aspects of the administration of the project. 

if you are interested in a career working in project management, administration, or in the charity sector, and would like to develop skills or experience, we would love to hear from you, since we anticipate this role will provide lots of helpful and relevant experience towards your CV and job applications. Alternatively, you may already have a developed skillset in this field, in which case we would love for you to join us to apply these skills to support the project!

We use several digital systems to track and progress referrals, and you’ll be provided with training on how to use each of these: Microsoft Planner, Volunteero and Notion.

The sorts of tasks you may be able to get involved with as a Project Officer include:

• administration through all stages of the project referral cycle, from an initial telephone call with the person being referred, sharing their request with our team of volunteers, assigning tasks to volunteers who are interested, and following up on any concerns
• enabling our volunteer recruitment and training processes through responding to volunteer enquiries and supporting volunteers through the application process
• systematic phone calls to existing beneficiaries and volunteers to check in on how tasks are going and provide updates
• digitising our existing training content, turning existing processes and slides into attractive online training modules
• organising or attending events to engage with volunteers and encourage increased engagement with the service
• identifying ways to diversify the volunteer group and increase awareness of the service among potential volunteers, particularly from underrepresented groups

You would be able to get involved with the tasks that interest you.

We expect the role to require 6-8 hours per week. Most tasks can be carried out flexibly and remotely and you would be able to arrange the hours around your other commitments. We ask that you only apply if you are able to commit to the role for at least 3 months.

At all stages, you’ll be supported by the Project Manager of the service. If you would like to have a chat about the role prior to registering your interest, please email Matthew at matthew.brindley@volunteeringmatters.org.uk

If you would like to find out more about the project, please visit https://volunteeringmatters.org.uk/project/good-neighbours-newcastle/

Skills

• We do not require you to have experience or qualifications; we are much more interested in your interest and motivation to develop skills in this area. We would love to hear from you if you possess the following characteristics:
  
• a clear and proactive communicator
• confident making phone calls to people you haven’t spoken to before
• keen to take on responsibility and ownership for taskS
• organised
• confident using technology (we will train you in our specific digital systems)
• You will need to have your own computer/laptop and phone.