Managing consultant volunteer roles in Birmingham

Are you a committed Christian with professional investment experience who has a heart to see a new generation develop a vibrant faith in Jesus Christ? 

We are seeking a volunteer with professional investment experience to join our Audit & Finance Committee, supporting the Board in its responsibility for financial oversight, governance and assurance. 

This role would suit someone who has worked as an investment consultant, investment manager, or in a similar advisory capacity, and who can bring independent expertise to strengthen the Committee’s oversight of our investment arrangements. 

Scripture Union holds investments of approximately £1.9 million (including a capital endowment of around £0.65 million) and a further c.£0.8 million held in cash or cash-equivalent deposits to support liquidity needs. These invested assets are managed externally by Rathbones through charity-specific pooled investment funds. Investment decisions are made in line with our ethical investment policy, which ensures that funds avoid sectors inconsistent with our Christian values. 

About the role 

As part of a broader remit covering financial reporting, internal controls, audit, risk management and compliance, the Committee also plays a key role in: 

• reviewing and approving our investment policies; and 

• monitoring the performance of the investment management, making recommendations to the Board where appropriate.

In this context, you will help the Committee: 

• monitor the performance of our funds managed by Rathbones; 

• provide constructive challenge on investment performance and reporting; 

• support the Committee in reviewing whether the current investment strategy and asset mix remains appropriate; and 

• contribute to providing assurance that there is a robust level of due diligence, oversight and governance in place. 

This is not a fund management role. Instead, it is a governance role focused on independent scrutiny, challenge and assurance, as part of the Committee’s wider responsibilities for financial performance, control and risk management. 

What you will bring 

We are particularly interested in candidates with: 

• experience as an investment consultant, investment manager, or similar; 

• strong understanding of investment performance, asset allocation and risk; 

• experience of reviewing investment manager reports and providing insight at a strategic level; 

• the confidence to provide constructive challenge within a committee setting; 

• the ability to support non-specialists in understanding complex investment matters; and 

• a strong interest in supporting good governance and stewardship of charitable resources. 

Previous experience of charity governance or committee membership would be helpful but is not essential. 

Commitment 

This is a voluntary role. The Committee usually meets four times a year with additional preparation time required to review papers in advance. 

You will play an important role in supporting the Committee to fulfil its responsibilities for financial oversight, risk management and investment governance, helping to ensure the charity’s resources are managed effectively and responsibly. 

Do you have a passion for helping grow support that transforms lives? Are you ready to use your skills to make a difference? 

Join DFN and play a key role in growing the funding and partnerships that support our programmes in India.

Dignity Freedom Network (DFN) works in cities and in rural villages across India. We champion those society sidelines including those from low caste and tribal backgrounds.  Could you help secure funding from grant makers for our education, health and protection programmes?

What will you be doing?

You will support DFN’s fundraising team by helping to identify new opportunities, strengthen relationships with supporters, and contribute to the development of funding opportunities that enable our work to grow.

This role will involve using your writing and research skills to support a range of activities, working closely with the team to help increase DFN’s fundraising capacity and impact. The role is remote, with regular opportunities to connect with the fundraising team and learn more about DFN’s work. You will need access to a computer and the internet. 

What are we looking for?

Skills and experience

Essential 

• Good research skills 

• Excellent writing

• Strong interpersonal and communication skills. 

• Organised, reliable, and able to manage multiple tasks. 

• Commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusive practice. 

• Comfortable working independently and collaboratively in a small team. 

Desirable 

• Experience intrust and foundation fundraising and/or major donors 

• Previousfundraisingexperience (paid or voluntary) 

• Experienceofdevelopingfundraising resources 

What difference will you make?

Your contribution will help DFN strengthen its fundraising approach and secure support for programmes that create opportunities and improve lives.

By sharing your skills and experience, you will help a growing charity expand its ability to deliver meaningful work with communities across India.

What are the Benefits for you?

• Experience in a small, entrepreneurial charity where your contribution has visible impact. 
• Opportunities to develop or broaden your fundraising skills in a supportive environment. 
• Informal training in fundraising skills

• A warm, values‑driven team committed to inclusion, learning, and positive change. 

• References and recognition for your contribution to help you secure your first or next paid role

• An opportunity to make the world a better place!

• Working flexibly, tailored to your availability.

Dignity Freedom Network (DFN) is active across India. We work in large cities and in rural villages, with young children and new mums, with women who have experienced exploitation, and families facing discrimination and prejudice. We work to champion those society sidelines including those from low caste and tribal backgrounds.

Indian colleagues and volunteers deliver impactful education, health, protection and vocational skills programmes - the ladder needed by those we seek to help to overcome the barriers they face.

Help Shape Healthier Futures for Children and Families

Can you help drive the future success of a growing national charity?

HENRY (Health, Exercise, Nutrition for the Really Young) is seeking passionate and strategic individuals to join our Board of Trustees at an exciting point in our journey.

For over 15 years, HENRY has worked alongside parents, carers, communities and professionals to give babies and young children the healthiest possible start in life. Our evidence-based programmes, training and support help families build healthy habits, strengthen relationships and improve long-term wellbeing, particularly in communities experiencing the greatest health inequalities.

Today, HENRY supports more than 21,000 families every year and trains professionals across health and early years services nationwide. Last year alone:

• 21,662 families received support through our programmes, workshops and one-to-one services
• 9,608 parents and babies benefited from infant feeding support
• 88% of participants reported leading a healthier family lifestyle
• 96% rated our programmes and workshops as good or great
• 35% of families we supported were from the most deprived communities in the UK

As we work towards our vision of a healthy and happy start for every baby and child, we are entering a new phase of growth and development. Our ambitious 2030 strategy focuses on expanding our reach, strengthening sustainability, increasing our influence, and maintaining quality and impact as we grow.

About the Role

As a Trustee, you will play a key role in shaping HENRY's future. Working alongside fellow Board members, you will provide strategic leadership, support good governance, oversee organisational sustainability and help ensure we continue delivering meaningful impact for families across the UK.

This is a strategic, non-operational role that offers the opportunity to contribute your expertise while making a lasting difference to children's lives.

Who We're Looking For

We are particularly interested in individuals with experience in:

• Marketing and Communications
• Income Generation and Fundraising
• Legal and Contractual Matters

We also welcome candidates with:

• Previous trustee or governance experience
• Experience of scaling organisations
• Knowledge of early years, health or family services
• Relevant lived experience
• A strong commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion

Why Join HENRY?

Joining our Board is both a responsibility and a rewarding opportunity to create lasting social impact.

As a Trustee, you will:

• Help tackle health inequalities affecting babies and young children
• Influence the strategic direction of a respected national charity
• Develop your leadership, governance and board-level experience
• Work alongside a collaborative and experienced Board and executive team
• Gain insight into a charity delivering impact at scale across the UK

We are committed to building a diverse Board that reflects the communities we serve and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds aged 18 and over.

If you share our belief that every child deserves the best possible start in life, we'd love to hear from you and explore how your skills and experience can help shape HENRY's next chapter.

Ready to make a difference? Read our attached Trustee Recruitment Pack and click 'redirect to recruiter' to be forwarded to our application portal. 

Closing date: 9am Wednesday 19th August 2026
Interviews: week commencing 14th September 2026

HENRY is committed to safer recruitment and safeguarding. As a result, all successful trustee applicants will be required to complete a DBS check.

Volunteer Graphic Designer

We’re looking for a talented and creative Volunteer Graphic Designer to help us bring our ideas to life and make sure our communications look as good as the work we do. You’ll work with our team to create a wide range of materials, including posters, leaflets, newsletters, fundraising appeals, social media graphics, adoption materials, event promotions and other communications.

What you’ll do

• Take ideas and creative briefs from our team and turn them into strong visual designs.
• Create eye-catching posters, flyers, leaflets and other printed materials.
• Help us produce attractive and engaging newsletters.
• Design graphics for social media and digital communications.
• Create materials for fundraising campaigns, appeals and events.
• Help us tell the stories of the animals we rescue and the people we support through compelling visual content.
• Work within our existing brand and help develop a consistent and recognisable visual style.
• Suggest your own creative ideas and approaches.
• Make amendments and develop designs based on feedback.
• Prepare artwork for both digital use and professional printing.

What we’re looking for

We’re looking for someone who is creative, reliable and has a great eye for design. You’ll ideally have experience in graphic design and be able to show us examples of your work or a portfolio. You’ll be able to take a fairly simple idea or brief and turn it into something polished, professional and visually engaging. You’ll have a good understanding of design principles including layout, typography, imagery and colour, and be comfortable adapting your approach for different audiences and purposes.

Experience using Canva or similar software would be useful, but we’re more interested in your creativity and the quality of your work than the particular software you use.

You’ll need to be able to work independently, manage agreed deadlines, take feedback positively and pay attention to detail.

You don’t need previous charity experience, but an interest in animal welfare and a desire to use your skills to make a difference would be a real advantage.

Why volunteer with us?

Your work will have a direct and visible impact. Good design helps us reach more people, raise more money and ultimately do more for animals and the people who care for them. Your designs could help someone decide to adopt an animal, encourage someone to donate, attract a new volunteer or help us reach a family who needs support with veterinary costs. This is an opportunity to use your creative skills for a local charity where your work will genuinely make a difference.

The role is flexible and can largely be carried out remotely. We can agree projects and deadlines around your availability, so it could suit an experienced designer, someone returning to design, or a creative professional looking to volunteer their skills for a worthwhile cause. If you have a creative eye, enjoy turning ideas into great-looking finished products and would like to use your skills to support local animal welfare, we’d love to hear from you.

What are we looking for?

We’re looking for a creative, reliable and enthusiastic person who can take an idea and turn it into a professional, engaging and visually appealing finished product.

The most important thing is strong graphic design ability and a good eye for design. We’re not necessarily looking for someone with a particular qualification or a specific career background. We’re looking for someone who understands what makes good visual communication and can create designs that catch people’s attention, communicate a message clearly and encourage people to take action.

Our ideal volunteer will have experience creating materials such as posters, leaflets, flyers, newsletters, social media graphics, fundraising materials or promotional content. We’d particularly welcome someone who can show examples of their previous work through a portfolio or examples of designs they have created.

We’d like someone who can take a relatively simple brief from us - for example, an idea for a fundraising appeal or an adoption campaign - and use their own creativity to develop the concept into something really effective. We will often provide the content, photographs and key messages, but we need someone who can think about how best to present these visually.

The ability to work with an existing brand and maintain a consistent look and feel is important. You’ll need a good understanding of layout, typography, imagery, colour and visual hierarchy, as well as an ability to adapt designs for different audiences and formats.

Experience with Canva or similar design software would be useful. However, we’re more interested in what you can create than which software you use.

We’re also looking for someone who is:

• Creative - able to bring fresh ideas and suggest different ways of presenting our messages.
• Visually aware - with a strong eye for composition, typography, imagery and detail.
• Reliable - able to agree realistic deadlines and deliver work when promised.
• Independent - comfortable taking a brief and developing it without needing constant direction.
• Collaborative - happy to work with our team, listen to feedback and make revisions where needed.
• Organised - able to manage several projects and keep track of agreed deadlines.
• Adaptable - comfortable creating different types of materials for both print and digital use.
• Passionate about making a difference - interested in using their skills to support animal welfare.

Previous experience working with charities would be useful but is not essential. We’d welcome applications from professional designers, freelance designers, people looking to build their portfolio, or experienced creatives who simply want to use their skills for a local cause. Most importantly, we want someone who cares about producing work they can be proud of and understands that great design can help us reach more people, raise more funds and ultimately make a greater difference to animals and families in our community.

What difference will you make?

Good design can make a real difference to a local charity. Every day, we have important stories to tell about the animals we rescue, the families we support and the difference our volunteers, donors and supporters make. But having a good story is only part of the challenge. We need to make sure people notice it, understand it and feel motivated to take action.

As a local RSPCA branch, we rely heavily on our own fundraising and community support. The money we raise enables us to rescue animals, provide veterinary treatment, care for animals while they recover and find them safe and loving homes. We also provide financial support to local pet owners who are struggling to afford essential veterinary treatment, helping animals receive the care they need and remain with the people who love them.

A skilled volunteer graphic designer can help us communicate all of this far more effectively.

Your designs could help us create fundraising appeals that encourage more people to donate, adoption materials that help animals find their new homes, volunteer recruitment campaigns that bring new people into our team and social media content that reaches a much wider audience. You could help turn an idea for a campaign into a professional poster, transform information into an engaging leaflet or bring an animal's story to life through compelling visual content.

For a charity like ours, every additional person reached and every additional donation generated can make a tangible difference. Your work will also help us present ourselves consistently and professionally across our communications. This will strengthen our local presence, build recognition of our branch and help people understand that their support is making a direct difference to animals and families in our community.
Most importantly, you will be able to see the results of your contribution. A design you create could help raise the funds needed for an animal's veterinary treatment, attract a new fosterer, recruit a volunteer, find a home for an animal or encourage someone to support our work for the first time.
This isn't simply an opportunity to create attractive designs. It is an opportunity to use your creativity and professional skills to help animals and the people who care for them.

By volunteering your time and expertise, you will become an important part of our team and help us communicate our work more effectively, reach more people and ultimately do more for animals across our local community.

Before you apply

We’re hoping to build a small team of creative volunteers who can work with us on different projects, so we’d love to hear from anyone with graphic design skills and a creative eye.

We’ll review applications and portfolios as they come in and will contact all applicants. We’d particularly like to see examples of previous graphic design work, so please include a link to your portfolio, website or relevant examples where possible.

We’ll arrange a short informal conversation with applicants to talk about the role, your experience and the type of creative work you enjoy.

We’re hoping to start building our creative team as soon as possible, so applications will be reviewged on an ongoing basis rather than waiting for a fixed closing date.

Unreal offers support and information to people with lived experience of Depersonalisation and Derealisation (DPDR) - including people experiencing symptoms themselves and their carers, friends and families. We aim to raise awareness of DPDR, provide up-to date clinically-validated information, signpost people to relevant resources, push for policy change, assist in research studies and enable people living with DPDR to speak with others through our flagship Peer Support Programme to help support each other.

We are supported by a dedicated network of volunteers and ambassadors whose expertise and lived experience are central to what we do.

Despite being a small and relatively young charity, officially founded in 2019, we have established ourselves as the leading voice on DPDR in the UK and are proud of what we have achieved.

Unreal enters this next chapter from a position of real strength. We have established ourselves as the leading charity for DPDR in the UK, with a peer support programme that continues to grow in demand, strong relationships with clinicians, policymakers and researchers, and a clear strategic direction.

We have recently set our key priorities for 2026 to 2030, and we are looking for new board members who are excited to help us deliver on that ambition.

This is a significant moment for the charity. We are recruiting for trustees at a time when we have strong foundations, a clear sense of purpose, and real momentum. The people who join us now will help shape the next chapter of Unreal.

At such a pivotal time for the charity, and to help achieve our ambitions, we are looking for enthusiastic and committed individuals to join our Trustees.

We are currently recruiting:

• A HR/Governance Trustee

• A Finance Trustee

• A Fundraising Trustee

We welcome applications from people with or without previous trustee experience. What matters most is your commitment to our mission and the skills and perspectives you bring.

We have attached our recruitment pack with details of the individual roles. 

Time commitment

• Board meetings: monthly (9 per year), held online

• Full trustee days, held in person: twice a year

• Online Trustee meetings, twice a year

• Additional time required for specific projects or sub-committees

Support for new trustees

We are committed to making trusteeship at Unreal as accessible and rewarding as possible. All new board members will receive a full induction and training

Expenses

All reasonable expenses incurred in carrying out your role as a trustee will be reimbursed in line with our expenses policy.

What we are looking for

We are not looking for a particular type of person. We are looking for the right people. Within our trustees and board, we aim to bring together a range of skills, backgrounds and perspectives. 

Full role specifications for each position are included below. These set out the specific skills, experience and qualities we are looking for, alongside the responsibilities of the role.

In addition to the specified roles below, we will also be recruiting more widely, and welcome applications from anyone who fulfils the below general criteria. 

We particularly welcome applications from:

• People with lived experience of DPDR, including carers, friends and family members.

• Clinicians and researchers working in the field.

Skills and experience that are valuable to us include:

• Finance

• Fundraising

• HR

• Governance

• Expertise in the mental health or charity sector. 

We ask all trustees to commit to a term of three to four years. The Chair may be appointed for a term of up to five years.

Before you apply

Trustees of Unreal must meet the following eligibility criteria. Please check these before applying.

You must:

• Be 18 years of age or older

• Not be automatically disqualified under the Charities Act 2011. This includes any person: with undischarged bankruptcy those who has been declared bankrupt; that has entered into an IVA; been disqualified as a company director; or that has certain unspent criminal convictions relating to dishonesty, fraud or contempt of court

• Have no safeguarding restrictions that would prevent you from working with vulnerable people

• Be willing to declare any conflicts of interest and to complete a DBS check

If you are unsure whether any of the above applies to you, the Charity Commission website has further guidance.

All trustees are expected to uphold Unreal's Code of Conduct for Board Members. A copy will be shared with shortlisted candidates and must be signed on appointment.

General Trustee Responsibilities

Candidates should demonstrate:

• Commitment to the charity’s mission and values.

• Integrity, sound judgement and professionalism.

• Ability to contribute to effective governance and strategic decision-making.

• Willingness to act in the charity’s best interests at all times.

• Ability to work collaboratively and constructively as part of a board.

• Good communication and interpersonal skills.

• Understanding of confidentiality, accountability and conflicts of interest.

• Awareness of safeguarding, equality, diversity and inclusion responsibilities.

• Financial awareness and responsible oversight of resources.

• Sufficient time and commitment to fulfil trustee duties and attend meetings.

• Willingness to undertake training and ongoing development.

• Relevant professional, leadership, governance or lived experience would be advantageous.

How to apply

To apply, please send the following:

• A CV or brief summary of your relevant experience

• A short personal statement of up to 250 words setting out what you would bring to Unreal and why the role appeals to you

We ask that any applications submitted are in the candidate’s own words. 

Deadline

The closing date for applications is 27 August 2026.
Interviews are expected to take place in September 2026.

The Recruitment Process

We want to make this process as straightforward and human as possible. Shortlisted candidates will be invited to an informal conversation with one or more of our trustees, giving you a chance to find out more about us and for us to learn more about you. Successful candidates will then be invited to a formal panel interview with set questions. 

Interviews will be held virtually, though if you would prefer to meet in person we will do our best to accommodate this.

We are committed to making this process as accessible as possible. If you require any adjustments to support your application or participation in the interview process, please do get in touch and we will do our best to accommodate you. 

We are committed to equity, diversity and inclusion in everything we do, including in how we recruit. We particularly welcome applications from people with lived experience of DPDR, and from those who are underrepresented in charity leadership.