Reach volunteers take cancer trust to the next level

“I’ve done nothing but recommend Reach. I’m a trustee of another charity and they use Reach all the time as well. I coach other CEOs and I always recommend Reach to them.” 

Dragonfly Cancer Trust, a nationwide charity which supports children and young people with life-threatening cancer diagnoses, has a long history with Reach, having recruited skills-based volunteers and trustees through us for over a decade. Jane Dennison, chief executive officer cannot praise us enough, as she describes the team she has put together with our help. 

“The chemistry is good. They’re very altruistic. They’re very focused on the vision of the organisation. They want to help. They want to add value to our organisation.” 

At the time of writing, 23 skills-based volunteers and trustees were working for Dragonfly, having been recruited through Reach. They work in the fields of service delivery, operations, marketing, social media and digital support. Jane was excited about working with the newly-appointed chair who had just joined, and upbeat about using our platform to find a replacement for her “incredible” treasurer, who is stepping down after five years, following a long career as a senior partner for an international management consultancy. 
 
Having explored other options for volunteer recruitment, such as Job Centres and other recruitment sites, Jane has found Reach by far the best fit for her organisation. She particularly likes the improved website and describes the ease of posting vacancies as “fabulous.” “It’s easy to use, easy to navigate. As a busy CEO, that’s what I look for when I do things. I look for shortcuts and straightforward routes to get results.” 

She finds the use of prompts to suggest areas of expertise and remind users to highlight certain details particularly useful. 

“It feels very inclusive, very fair. It doesn’t feel as cumbersome as some of the other sites that you have to register vacancies on. The opportunity to list vacancies for free, as a small charity, that’s a game changer for us.” 

In addition to her experience with the treasurer and the new chair, she lists a fundraiser who has now become a permanent member of staff and a team of four digital volunteers, one of whom is herself a cancer survivor, as huge successes. “The group are part of the backbone of the organisation, without which we couldn’t progress. We couldn’t do the sort of things we aspire to do without their help.”  

Amongst other things, this group have been busy researching, gathering evidence and producing various reports around a sibling support plan, which will form a key part of the organisation’s strategy for 2026. On top of that, the team’s work has been transformative in terms of pulling together data to support reports and statistics for funding applications. 

Overall, Jane is looking forward to a promising future for Dragonfly, given the calibre of the skilled volunteers she has recruited through Reach.  “Watch this space next year,” she concludes. “It’s going to be brilliant.”