Volunteer Coordinator - Volunteer in Hoylake

Lead our volunteer team creating memorial children's books for bereaved families. Build a compassionate community of storytellers who help children remember their loved ones. Perfect for people managers who want to use their coordination skills to support families through grief.

The Volunteer Coordinator role is absolutely critical to our charity's success—volunteers are the lifeblood of everything we do, and without excellent coordination, our entire service collapses.

Every memorial book we create for a bereaved child is made by a volunteer. Our founder cannot personally recruit, train, support, and coordinate volunteers while also running the charity, applying for grants, and building partnerships. You'll take ownership of volunteer management, freeing leadership to focus on fundraising and strategic growth.

Research shows most volunteer programs lose 50% of new volunteers within the first year—often because of poor onboarding, lack of support, or feeling undervalued. Your role prevents this. By providing excellent onboarding, ongoing encouragement, and a strong team community, you'll build a stable, committed volunteer base. Experienced volunteers produce higher-quality memorial books faster, understand grief sensitivity better, and require less oversight. Your retention work directly translates to better outcomes for bereaved families.

When we apply for major grants, funders ask "How do you ensure quality? How do you support your volunteers? What's your retention rate?" A dedicated Volunteer Coordinator demonstrates organizational maturity and professionalism. Your role proves we're a sustainable operation with proper infrastructure.

Working with bereaved families is emotionally demanding. Without proper support, volunteers experience compassion fatigue and burnout, leading to poor-quality work or volunteers leaving entirely. Your attention to volunteer wellbeing—through check-ins, peer support, and recognizing warning signs—protects both our volunteers and the families they serve. You're the safety net that ensures our service remains compassionate and sustainable.

Volunteers don't just want tasks—they want connection and purpose. Your monthly meetings, collaborative culture, and appreciation efforts transform isolated individuals into a cohesive team united by meaningful work. This sense of belonging is what keeps volunteers engaged long-term and attracts new recruits.

Currently, volunteer management consumes 15-20 hours weekly of leadership time. Your role returns those hours to strategic priorities partnership development with bereavement services, fundraising applications, and scaling our training to other organisations. You're not just managing volunteers—you’re multiplying our entire organisation's capacity to create impact.

You’ll build the volunteer management infrastructure that will serve our charity for years. Long after your volunteer term, the systems you create will continue recruiting, retaining, and empowering volunteers who help bereaved children.

We’re seeking a warm, organized people-person who excels at building supportive communities and bringing out the best in others. You’ll need both the interpersonal skills to connect with diverse volunteers and the administrative skills to keep everything running smoothly.

• Essential Qualities
• People Management and Emotional Intelligence: This role is fundamentally about relationships. You should genuinely enjoy supporting others, celebrating their successes, and helping them overcome challenges. Experience managing volunteers, leading teams, supervising staff, or coordinating community groups is extremely valuable. You need the emotional intelligence to sense when someone is struggling, the communication skills to have supportive conversations, and the judgement to know when to step in versus when to give space.
• Organisational Skills and Systems Thinking: You’ll be juggling recruitment, onboarding, ongoing support, quality assurance, and administrative coordination simultaneously. Strong organisational abilities are essential—you should naturally create systems, maintain databases, track details, and ensure nothing falls through the cracks. Experience with volunteer management software, CRM systems, or project coordination tools is helpful but not required.
• Recruitment and Marketing Flair: You’ll need to attract compassionate, skilled volunteers in a competitive volunteering landscape. Experience with recruitment (volunteer or employment), marketing, community outreach, or social media engagement is valuable. You should be able to craft compelling messages that inspire people to join our mission and know where to find potential volunteers (universities, churches, creative communities, professional networks).
• Empathy and Grief Awareness: While you don’t need bereavement counselling experience, you must understand that our volunteers are supporting families through profound loss. You should appreciate the emotional weight of this work, recognise signs of compassion fatigue, and create space for volunteers to process difficult experiences. Personal experience with grief or volunteering in sensitive contexts (healthcare, social services, crisis support) provides valuable perspective.

Helpful Experience (But Not Required)

• Volunteer Coordination: Previous volunteer management or coordination roles
• HR/People Operations: Recruitment, onboarding, performance management, employee engagement
• Community Building: Creating cohesive teams, facilitating group discussions, organising events
• Nonprofit Sector: Understanding volunteer motivations, resource constraints, mission-driven work
• Training Delivery: Supporting learning and development
• Customer Service: Responsive communication, problem-solving, relationship management

The Community Builder Mindset: Great volunteer coordinators don’t just manage—they inspire. You should find joy in connecting people, facilitating collaboration, and watching volunteers grow in confidence and skill. You’re energized by creating belonging, celebrating contributions, and building something meaningful together.

If you love bringing people together, supporting their development, and creating communities where everyone feels valued and empowered, this role is perfect for you.

What You’ll Do

As our Volunteer Coordinator, you’ll be the heart of our team—recruiting, supporting, and empowering volunteers who create memorial books, eulogies, and legacy stories for bereaved children and families. You’ll build a thriving volunteer community that delivers compassionate, professional service to families during their most difficult moments.

Key Responsibilities

• Help with Volunteer Recruitment: Create compelling volunteer recruitment materials for social media, websites, and community boards. Screen applications to identify candidates with empathy, creativity, and commitment. Conduct friendly virtual or in-person interviews to assess fit and explain our mission. Coordinate with our Training Program Manager to ensure smooth onboarding of new volunteers. Build recruitment partnerships with local universities, churches, creative networks, and community groups.
• Onboarding and Training Coordination: Welcome new volunteers and guide them through our video training program (eulogies, memory books, fictional legacy stories). Assign experienced volunteers as mentors for their first 2-3 memorial book projects. Monitor progress through initial projects and provide encouragement and support. Ensure volunteers feel confident using our AI tools (Childbook.AI, Scrively, Designrr) before working independently.
• Ongoing Volunteer Support: Serve as first point of contact for volunteer questions, challenges, or concerns. Host monthly team meetings (virtual or in-person) for skill-sharing, problem-solving, and community building. Facilitate peer support and collaboration—connecting volunteers for brainstorming and feedback. Recognise volunteer contributions through thank-you notes, appreciation events, and celebrating milestones. Monitor volunteer wellbeing and watch for signs of compassion fatigue or burnout.
• Quality Assurance and Development: Review completed memorial books to ensure quality standards and grief-sensitive approach. Provide constructive feedback to volunteers when improvements are needed. Identify skills gaps and coordinate additional training or resources. Gather volunteer feedback to continuously improve our processes and support systems. Work with leadership to develop volunteer recognition programmes and retention strategies.
• Administrative Coordination: Maintain volunteer database with contact details, availability, skills, and project history. Match incoming family requests with available volunteers based on capacity and expertise. Track volunteer hours for grant reporting and impact measurement. Coordinate schedules to ensure consistent coverage and reasonable workload distribution. Manage volunteer communications through email updates, shared calendars, and team messaging.

You’ll work closely with our founder and report on volunteer team health, capacity, and needs. You’ll collaborate with our Training Program Project Manager (who creates training materials) and coordinate directly with 5-15 Memorial Book Creator volunteers (who work with families). You’ll also liaise with our grant writers who need volunteer statistics and testimonials for funding applications.

Time Commitment: 15-25 hours/month (flexible schedule, mostly remote with occasional in-person team events in Liverpool area).