Research and Campaigns Volunteer

What will you do?

Be a member of the Research and Campaigns team gathering insight on the issues affecting our residents and finding solutions to address the root cause.
Depending on your skills and time, you may do one or all of the following:

• Use our insight to identify common or unfair problems that clients come for help about. This may be analysing our data, analysing evidence forms, speaking with advisors, creating surveys
• Speak with volunteers and staff to understand the cause of the problem, how it affects clients, and what change would solve the problem, and present this back in a report
• Help to organise awareness of the problem. This might involve creating material, such as newsletters or presentation or writing something for social media or newspaper, which could be used to explain the problems to others (such as local councillors or members of the public)
• Help to organise getting the organisation to engage in a solution, which may be an event, reports or meetings
• Help National Citizens Advice carry out research about how certain issues affect our clients. This might involve doing a survey with clients to find out how a change in benefit is affecting them

What’s in it for you?

• Make a real different to people’s lives
• Learn about a range of issues such as benefits, debt, employment and housing, and the impact on residents and communities
• Build on valuable skills such as communication and problem solving, and increase your employability particularly in jobs involving social sciences, communications
• Work with a range of different people, independently, in a team and within your local community
• Have a positive impact in your community
• And we’ll reimburse expenses too.

What do you need to have?

You don’t need specific qualifications or skills but you’ll need to:

• Be friendly and approachable
• Be non-judgmental and politically impartial, respect views, values and cultures that are different to your own
• Have good IT skills
• Have good verbal and written skills
• Be willing to learn about and follow the Citizens Advice aims, principles and policies, including confidentiality and data protection
• Be willing to undertake training in your role

How much time do you need to give?

We can be flexible about the time spent and how often you volunteer.

Value Inclusion

Our volunteers come from a range of backgrounds, and we particularly welcome
applications from racially minoritised people, people of colour, disabled people,
people with physical or mental health conditions, LGBTQ+ and non-binary
people.

Questions?

If you have any questions about the role or volunteering, email us at: volunteer@westsussexcab.org.uk