Group support volunteer jobs in Ashington, northumberland
About the role
We are recruiting for a Senior Conferences and Events Manager to join on a full-time, 35 hours per week, maternity cover contract for 12 months. This is a home-based role, with monthly travel required for conferences, events and in-person stakeholder or team meetings.
As Senior Conference and Events Manager you will be responsible on the strategic delivery of an annual portfolio of conferences and events, which range from Society owned conferences and events, to external public and professional events and conferences. You will work to maximise engagement and influencing opportunities for our research and influencing stakeholders, including a national conference, research events and roundtables.
In this role you will oversee and line manage the Conferences and Events team, in addition to overseeing business and financial planning and monitoring. You will be responsible for budget management of the events programmes, including setting, managing, reporting on and reforecasting the team budget.
By working collaboratively with colleagues and key stakeholders you will ensure the voice of those affected by dementia is considered appropriately in the events we deliver and attend. You will plan the involvement of lived experience across all events, including co-producing all or parts of the conferences and events we deliver. In addition to this, you will build in meaningful equality, diversity and inclusion into our conferences and events programme, ensuring that our events are inclusive to all attendees, and representative of a diverse range of voices.
Interviews for this role have been provisionally scheduled to take place via MS Teams on Wednesday 10th June.
About you
Joining us, you’ll have experience of working at a senior level in an events role and experience managing budgets effectively and using project management skills to remain organised. You’ll also have experience of successful management in conference production, organising successful large-scale events and conferences – in person, hybrid and virtually.
Due to the nature of this role, you’ll need to have good interpersonal and communication skills and the experience required to manage, motivate and inspire staff and volunteers to create a high performing team. You’ll have experience of leading a team to achieve success, including developing and working to briefs, workload planning and managing a team to deliver high standards with agreed timeframes.
Crucially, you’ll have experience building relationships with senior stakeholders, third party event partners and agencies with the ability to influence and negotiate effectively.
What you’ll focus on:
- Delivering a portfolio of events for our research and influencing stakeholders, including a national conference, research events and roundtables.
- Supporting the creation of strategies for improving events activity and maximising opportunities.
- Managing the budget of the events programmes, including setting, managing, reporting on and reforecasting the team budget.
- Line managing the Conferences and Events team and temporary staff and volunteers as necessary.
- Ensuring the voice of those affected by dementia is considered appropriately in the events we deliver and attend. Planning the involvement of lived experience across all events, including co-producing all or parts of the conferences and events we deliver.
- Effectively evaluating all activity, measuring the impact of projects against set objectives and outcomes in line with our strategy, and ensuring continuous improvement.
- Working collaboratively with brand, marketing and communications colleagues to create robust communications plans for events that ensure the right promotion prior to, during and after events.
About Alzheimer's Society - who are we and what’s our mission?
Dementia is the UK’s biggest killer. One in three people born in the UK today will develop dementia in their lifetime.
At Alzheimer’s Society, we’re the UK’s leading dementia charity and the only one to tackle all aspects of dementia by giving help and hope to people living with dementia today and in the future. We give vital support to people facing the most frightening times of their lives, while also funding ground-breaking research and campaigning to make dementia the priority it should be.
Together with our supporters, we’re working towards a world where dementia no longer devastates lives. Our values make sure that our focus is clear for the challenges and opportunities ahead and remind us of what we all stand for.
Our commitment to Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
We need to ensure the voices around our table better reflect and understand the communities we exist to serve. We strongly encourage individuals to apply who have a disability, impairment or health condition or individuals who identify as part of a minority ethnic background, as these groups are currently under-represented at Alzheimer's Society.
Our hiring process
We want you to bring your whole self to the process. Applications are anonymised until interview stage, and we’re happy to support any adjustments. Share your feedback via our candidate survey when applying to help us improve. We may close early if we receive high interest (with 48 hours’ notice). Some roles may require a DBS check as part of our safer recruitment commitment. Thinking about using AI during the recruitment process? We know this can be helpful in many ways but remember to include your personal and authentic self too. Your voice and experience are what really set you apart.
Giving back to you
At Alzheimer’s Society, we value our people and take a total reward approach to pay and benefits. You’ll enjoy a generous double-matched pension scheme, 27 days’ annual leave (plus bank holidays and wellbeing days), and access to a free Health Shield Cash Plan, 24/7 EAP, Thrive mental wellbeing support, and virtual GP services. Our Society Plus platform offers exclusive discounts, wellbeing resources, and recognition schemes, while our flexible working, family-friendly policies, and life assurance provide peace of mind and work/life balance. We also offer a free Will-writing service and long service awards to recognise your ongoing commitment.
Are you someone who can build trusted relationships across sectors, develop sustainable income, and turn strategic opportunities into meaningful impact?
Are you looking for a part-time, senior role where you can shape organisational direction, grow partnerships, and deliver programmes with national and international reach?
The Design in Mental Health Network (DiMHN) is a UK-based charity dedicated to improving mental health outcomes through better design. We are seeking a strategic and entrepreneurial Head of Partnerships & Programmes to play a central role in our next phase of growth.
In this role, success will mean building high-value partnerships, growing sustainable income, and delivering programmes that expand DiMHN’s impact and influence.
WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING
Reporting to the Chief Executive, you will:
- Drive sustainable income through a mix of commercial partnerships, membership growth, and charitable funding
- Develop and lead strategic and commercial partnerships, from opportunity through to delivery
- Lead the design, delivery, and evaluation of programmes across our core areas of work
- Grow and engage a diverse membership across commercial and health sector stakeholders
- Embed strong monitoring, evaluation, and reporting to demonstrate impact and inform decision-making
WHO WE'RE LOOKING FOR
We are looking for a strategic, relationship-driven leader who can translate opportunity into impact, income, and influence.
Knowledge and experience
You will bring:
- A strong track record of developing and securing income through partnerships, sponsorship, membership, and/or charitable funding
- Experience building and managing commercial or strategic partnerships, including identifying opportunities and maintaining long-term relationships
- Experience designing and delivering programmes involving multiple stakeholders, sectors, and/or geographies
- The ability to develop robust business cases, including assessing opportunities, risks, and resource requirements
- Experience growing and engaging professional networks, memberships, or cross-sector communities
- Confidence working in complex, multi-stakeholder environments
Knowledge of the mental health, healthcare, design, or built environment sectors is welcome, but not essential.
Personal attributes
You will be:
- Strategic and entrepreneurial, able to spot and develop opportunities
- Collaborative and relationship-led, with the ability to build trust across diverse stakeholders
- Impact-focused, motivated by delivering measurable outcomes
- Adaptable and resilient, comfortable working in a growing and evolving organisation
- Passionate about improving mental health outcomes and interested in how design can improve people’s lives
WHAT YOU'LL GET IN RETURN
As part of the team, you will benefit from:
- Annual leave - 28 days’ annual leave plus bank holidays (pro rata)
- Work from home – though in-person meetings with partners and members will be expected in order to build strong working relationships
- Flexible working - flexibility in how the 21 hours are worked across the week (to be agreed during offer discussions)
NEXT STEPS
Please see https://bit.ly/DIMHNPartnershipsProgrammes for our Candidate Pack, application instructions and details about the interview process.
The Design in Mental Health Network (DiMHN) is a charity dedicated to improving the design of mental health environments.
The client requests no contact from agencies or media sales.
What does it take to keep a charity like ours running? What sits behind every support call answered, every research database accessed, every fundraising campaign delivered? Infrastructure. And the people who build, protect and evolve it.
As a Senior Infrastructure Engineer, you'll play a central role in shaping, operating and maintaining our predominantly Microsoft cloud environment — keeping it strong, secure and ready for what comes next. Reporting to the Infrastructure Services Manager, you'll support, maintain and enhance our enterprise infrastructure across Azure cloud, Microsoft 365, identity, endpoint, network and core platform services.
You'll lead on complex incidents, drive root-cause analysis, and bring the kind of calm, expert thinking that keeps services running and colleagues confident. This is a hands-on, cloud-first role with real scope to influence how we design, govern and optimise cloud services and our infrastructure for the long term.
This role would particularly suit someone who has moved beyond traditional, on-prem infrastructure into operational Azure and Microsoft 365 engineering and is confident owning cloud platforms end to end.
This is a 12 month fixed term contract.
About you:
You're an experienced infrastructure professional who brings both depth of technical knowledge and the mindset of a trusted colleague. You understand that the work you do has real consequences for real people, and that motivates you to get things right. You're equally comfortable diving into a complex incident at pace and stepping back to think about how we build more resilient, secure and cost-effective cloud services over time.
You take security seriously, communicate with clarity across technical and non-technical audiences, and you thrive in environments where collaboration and accountability go hand in hand. You're someone who keeps learning, shares what you know, and makes the team around you better.
You'll have:
- Proven, demonstrable experience in Microsoft cloud technologies, including in-depth hands-on Azure experience (cloud platforms, virtual compute, storage, networking and the governance principles that keep it all accountable).
- Experience administering and optimising Microsoft 365 services, including identity, security and collaboration tooling.
- A grounding in enterprise infrastructure — servers, directory services, hybrid identity — and the hands-on experience to back it up.
- Experience managing and supporting Disaster Recovery services to address continuity of vital business functions.
- A security-first mindset, with practical knowledge of MFA, conditional access, privileged access management and vulnerability remediation.
- Proven networking foundations across WAN, VPN, firewalling and secure remote access.
- The discipline to work within ITSM frameworks and the rigour to maintain accurate configuration and asset data.
- Experience working alongside a Managed Service Provider as part of an augmented team, including managing service quality and accountability.
- A track record of producing documentation that works for diverse audiences — runbooks, procedures, service improvement write-ups.
- Genuine curiosity about the infrastructure landscape and a commitment to staying sharp as it evolves.
What you'll focus on:
- Owning, evolving and maintaining our hybrid (predominantly Microsoft cloud platform) infrastructure — secure, stable and performing, day in, day out, and under pressure when it counts.
- Owning complex incidents from first response through to root-cause analysis and lasting fixes.
- Working shoulder-to-shoulder with our Security team to embed good practice across everything we build and run.
- Helping us get more from what we have — through cost optimisation, service rationalisation and smarter configuration.
- Being a dependable partner to suppliers and managed service providers, holding them to the standard our users deserve.
- Championing modern identity protection across the organisation.
- Bringing energy and expertise to a team that genuinely wants to do good work together.
The infrastructure you build here will help us reach more people living with dementia, more quickly, more reliably. If you're ready to bring your infrastructure skills and wider technology expertise to a role with real purpose, we'd love to hear from you.
Important Dates
- Application deadline is 23:59 on Sunday 31st May 2026
- Interviews begin week commencing: 8th June 2026
About Alzheimer's Society
Dementia is the UK's biggest killer. One in three people born in the UK today will develop dementia in their lifetime.
At Alzheimer's Society, we're the UK's leading dementia charity and the only one to tackle all aspects of dementia by giving help and hope to people living with dementia today and in the future. We give vital support to people facing the most frightening times of their lives, while also funding groundbreaking research and campaigning to make dementia the priority it should be.
Together with our supporters, we're working towards a world where dementia no longer devastates lives.
Our values make sure that our focus is clear for the challenges and opportunities ahead and remind us of what we all stand for.
Our commitment to Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
We need to ensure the voices around our table better reflect and understand the communities we exist to serve. We strongly encourage individuals to apply who have a disability, impairment or health condition or individuals who identify as Black, Asian or from another minority ethnic background, as these groups are currently under-represented at Alzheimer's Society.
We want everyone we work with, as a colleague, volunteer, supporter, or someone we support, to feel included and that they belong at Alzheimer's Society.
Our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy here along with our internal employee forum and Employee Lived Experience network groups help us promote inclusion and belonging, becoming an engaged and inclusive organisation for all our people.
Our hiring process
During your recruitment process we want to make sure that you bring your whole self and can be at your best. We are working hard to ensure our recruitment process is as inclusive as possible, so please do inform us of your experience and anything you think we could do better by completing our candidate survey when you apply. Please also contact Alzheimer's Society Talent Acquisition Team via [email protected] for application support or any adjustments you might need.
To ensure fairness and consistency to select the best candidate for this role, all our applications are anonymised up until an interview has been confirmed. We recognise the benefits of AI, but if you're considering using it to submit your application, we encourage you to reflect on the value it truly adds. AI tools often lack the personal touch and authenticity that set candidates apart. We want to hear your unique perspective, experiences, and skills, so we encourage you to showcase them in your own voice.
We try to avoid closing roles early where possible, however if we receive a high volume of applications, we may close earlier than the advertised closing date. Should this occur, we will aim to provide you with at least 48 hours' notice.
We are committed to safer recruitment and ensuring the welfare of those we work with, due to the nature of some of our roles, we might need to carry out a Criminal Record Check at the relevant level. You can read more information via our Website.
Giving back to you
Our employees work hard every day to make a true difference in people's lives. We are proud to support them with a range of benefits, recognition and many options for working agilely, all contributing to a strong work life balance. We also have various learning programmes to support you in your development and help you grow to realise your potential and shape a career with Alzheimer's Society.
You can also visit our Working for Us pages, which give you more information about what it's like to be an employee at the Society.