Refining our recruitment through Reach

Open Door St Albans is a charity dedicated to supporting and advocating for homeless people in the local area. When the Chair of Trustees stepped down, the charity was keen to find someone with a strategic approach to guide them through a period of growth and transition. After initially exploring their own networks without success, Open Door looked to Reach Volunteering to help them fill this important vacancy.  

“I already knew of Reach,” said Sarah Chambers, Fundraising, Publicity, Administration and Volunteer Co-ordinator, “and when it became clear that we weren’t going to be able to recruit through our own networks, I contacted the service team at Reach to talk about how best to approach it.  

“As we are such a small organisation, they recommended that we try the free option using the Reach platform first. I was able to search through potential volunteers to see if there were people locally who might be a good fit and found three candidates who looked good.

“I passed these to the Vice Chair and Treasurer and they agreed to approach them about the role. We were delighted that all three responded. One felt that the charity wasn’t quite what they were looking for, but the other two were very keen.  

Easy to reach great candidates

“The Treasurer and Vice Chair met with them both and then invited them to meet the other trustees at a trustee meeting. The board then decided collectively to offer the position to Rachel.  

“It was such an easy process and we were delighted to find someone so incredible. We already had the role profile ready to go and it was simple to upload this to Reach and so helpful that we were able to search geographically and be proactive about approaching people about the role. We’ve been so pleased that we are now advertising again on Reach for two more trustees.  

Finding the perfect person

“Our new chair, Rachel, has been amazing. She’s such a brilliant fit for the charity and has expertise and skills we were unlikely to find through our own networks.   

“As a recently retired civil servant with extensive management and strategic experience, Rachel is really moving things forward. She has so much drive and energy which is just what we need going into the next phase of our development as we look to move more into the campaigning and influencing space to help address the issues at the heart of homelessness.    

“Using Reach Volunteering to recruit our chair gave us access to a wider range of candidates and skillsets than we would otherwise have and we were able to find the ideal person to provide the strategic direction we need. We would highly recommend using Reach for trustee recruitment.”