IT Volunteer Roles

Cats Protection is the UK’s leading feline welfare charity and our vision is a world where every cat is treated with kindness and an understanding of its needs. Cats are at the centre of everything we do and our objectives are: homing, neutering and educating people about cats and their care. We help thousands of cats across the UK each year thanks to our network of dedicated volunteers, staff and supporters.

A bit about this role

Our social media volunteers use their passion and knowledge of social media to promote the activities of local volunteer groups and teams though various channels. They directly help cats by raising awareness of Cats Protection. A higher profile can help us raise the funds we need for our work, ensure people know they can adopt a cat from us, help promote neutering and help as many people as possible learn more about feline welfare.

What can you expect to be doing?

• Promoting the work of Cats Protection through various social media channels, for example, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
• Gathering information from across the organisation and locally within your team or volunteer group
• Writing and creating social media content, ensuring it complies with policies and guidelines
• Scheduling and posting social media content
• Monitoring activity and responding to comments on social media channels

A bit more information about this role and the team

What are the benefits to you and the cats?

You will develop new skills, expand your knowledge, and make a significant contribution to improving the lives of cats and kittens by raising the profile of Cats Protection through social media. You will also meet new people, make new friends and be part of a dedicated team of volunteers.

We’re looking for someone with

• A passion for social media and experience of using social media channels regularly
• Knowledge of the advantages and disadvantages of using social media
• Good IT skills
• Excellent writing skills, including good grammar and spelling
• Good communication skills
• Willingness to be part of a team

Time expectation

Our social media volunteers can expect to spend between two to five hours per week in this role. This role is flexible and can be shared by more than one volunteer if needed.

Support, guidance and keeping you safe

At Cats Protection we believe our volunteers should be happy and confident in their roles. We provide support and guidance from our National Cat Centre and through our regional and local volunteer groups and teams. We offer engaging online and face-to-face training, expenses and have policies and processes to help volunteers get the most out of their time with us.

The wellbeing of our people is important and at Cats Protection we are committed to safeguarding children, adults at risk and all those that we come into contact with as part of our activities.

Cats Protection is the UK’s leading feline welfare charity and our vision is a world where every cat is treated with kindness and an understanding of its needs. Cats are at the centre of everything we do and our objectives are: homing, neutering and educating people about cats and their care. We help thousands of cats across the UK each year thanks to our network of dedicated volunteers, staff and supporters.

A bit about this role

Our volunteer website editors promote the activities of our local volunteer groups and teams by helping keep their websites relevant, up to date and engaging for members of the public. Local websites are one of the places members of the public will look to find out more about Cats Protection. A positive local profile can help raise funds, promote adopting a cat, promote neutering and make sure as many people as possible learn about great cat welfare.

What can you expect to be doing?

• Sourcing news and information for websites
• Communicating with others across Cats Protection
• Sourcing and updating information around rehoming, cat welfare, fundraising and volunteer recruitment
• Regularly updating and posting on your group’s website using the charity’s content management system (CMS)
• Ensuring that content meets with internal and external policies and guidelines

What are the benefits to you and the cats?

You will develop new skills, expand your knowledge and make a significant contribution to improving the lives of cats and kittens by making sure your local volunteer group or team’s website is exciting, current and informative. You will also meet new people, make new friends and be part of a dedicated team of volunteers.

We’re looking for someone with

• Good interpersonal skills
• Attention to detail
• The ability to communicate well with a range of people
• Willingness to be part of a team
• Good IT skills
• Editorial and photo editing skills (would be an advantage)

Time expectation

Our website editor volunteers usually spend two to three hours per week in this role, which is flexible and can be shared by more than one volunteer if needed.

Additional information

At Cats Protection we believe our volunteers should be happy and confident in their roles. To make sure this is the case, we provide support and guidance both remotely from our National Cat Centre and face to face through our regional and local volunteer groups and teams. We also offer varied online and face-to-face training and have wide-ranging policies covering all aspects of volunteering. We hope the support we provide will ensure our volunteers have a great experience with Cats Protection.

Web Editor Volunteer Role Description

Are you passionate about changing the way we treat animals? Do you want to help reduce damage to our environment? Do you want to get people to enjoy healthy vegan food that looks good and tastes great? 

The Vegan Society makes veganism more accessible and an easily adopted approach by supporting individuals, policy and decision makers, caterers, manufacturers, health care professionals and the media. 

Why do we need you? 

Our website covers a huge range of topics, aimed to support people in becoming, and staying, vegan. Keeping all of these up to date takes a lot of hours and many hands, especially when it comes to pages that need regular updates involving sourcing and editing images, improving accessibility, and updating content.

What does the role involve? 

The role will involve a variety of different tasks in updating the website such as: 

• Assisting the web team with content migration for the society’s new website.
• Adding and updating the events page, which will include editing images and proofreading content for the page. 
• Reviewing and fixing pages with broken links. 
• Publishing and updating recipes on our recipes page. 
• Supporting with accessibility improvements to the site such as adding alt tags to images. 
• Undertaking search engine optimisation tasks, such as identifying key search terms and popular pages we could develop. 
• More advanced web editing and development tasks may be offered to volunteers depending on their skillset and level of experience. 

We expect that tasks will be assigned based on your experience and confidence in the area, with full support from the Web Officer. This would all happen in software we provide. Our website CMS currently is Drupal; however, we will be moving over to Umbraco soon, so you would become familiar with this.

What training and development is available? 

Each task will be introduced in a phased way, with a full induction and training session on each area. We will provide training for specific areas, based on your existing experience. There are opportunities for all our roles to develop and to take on more responsibility.

What skills would be useful in doing this role? 

• Familiarity with content management systems such as WordPress, Drupal or Umbraco would be an ideal foundation for this role. 
• Experience with web editing. 
• Ability to use digital systems and processes. 
• Knowledge and experience of image editing to specific dimensions. 
• Ability to work independently. 
• Willingness to learn and develop in the role. 

 What does my availability have to be? 

This role will require four to six hours a week. For the first month of volunteering, you will need to commit to these hours between 9:am-5:pm (GMT) so that staff support is directly available to you. After this we will have a review and, if you are comfortable, your hours can be completed more flexibly around your schedule. To keep up contact with staff and help you to manage your tasks, we will schedule a weekly check-in video call with you during weeks that you are volunteering for us. 

 Who can I contact to find out more? 

You can contact Kaya (Senior Volunteering and Engagement Officer) and Emma (Web Officer).