Volunteering with Raise Advice is a rewarding way to support your community

It’s flexible. Most new volunteers for Raise choose to do one morning or afternoon a week when they first start and then build steadily up from there, should they wish to increase their hours.

No.  All you need to do is follow the advice as per the following website :  Volunteering and claiming benefits – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).  As a general rule, it’s always a good idea to let your job coach / personal advisor at the Job centre know you are volunteering. This is because volunteering is positively regarded by the DWP – for example, if you’re on Universal Credit, the number of hours you spend volunteering can count towards your agreed number of job-seeking hours.

There’s no specific length of time you have to commit to being a volunteer at Raise. The best thing about our volunteer programme is that it’s very flexible. For example, if you just spend a limited amount of time volunteering with us to update your skills and enhance your CV before moving on to access employment, then that’s great!  However, after spending some significant time volunteering with us, our team would have invested time in training & supporting you – so we’d ask in return you may wish to consider committing for a period of around 2 months.

Please download an application form here.

Once you have submitted your application, we invite all prospective volunteers to an informal interview.  This can be done in one of two ways :  

1. Visit our offices for an informal chat This is your opportunity to ask any questions that you might have about the role and for us to get to know you a bit better. We talk about the types of work you could be doing as a volunteer for Raise and chat in more detail about what it means to be a volunteer with Raise and how you’ll fit into our organisation in order to help us alleviate poverty in the community.  It’s also an opportunity for you to tell us about any additional support needs you might have, and how we can best respond to this.  

2. We can schedule this informal interview over Teams or Zoom, whatever you prefer.  

This informal interview typically lasts around 30 mins.

Your induction will be used to cover office protocols and important issues such as Safeguarding, Confidentiality, Data Protection and Equality & Diversity – these are essential policies that all staff & volunteers must adhere to whilst at Raise.

You’ll receive a sound understanding of how Raise works and your important place within the organisation. We shall also speak about our commitment to you as a new volunteer, and what we expect in return in terms of your commitment and behaviour.  

The training will examine in more detail the types of possible tasks you will be doing as a volunteer, and what we expect in return in terms of your commitment and behaviour.  

This is your opportunity to ask questions about the role.

You can access a whole range of training opportunities under the Advice Skills Academy – everything from brushing up on your basic maths & English to developing competencies in leadership & management.  

Should you wish to occupy a form filler role as a volunteer, you will receive specialist training from our Welfare Rights technical lead to enable you to confidently complete benefit forms over the phone with clients.