The right connections at the right time

When Joshua Oliver first looked for support to grow his civic arts and participatory democracy project, Hive Mind Speaks, he was working almost entirely on his own in Edinburgh. Based in a socially engaged community at The Melting Pot, he kept hearing one name come up again and again. As he put it, "I heard about Reach through my local community… a lot of people had mentioned it on there, who’d also used it as well. It came via word of mouth through a lot of people advocating for it. And then just naturally, doing my own research as well, it came up quite heavily. It’s probably the number one spot for volunteering, and especially in a kind of more socially engaged capacity."

At that stage, Joshua described himself as "a sort of one man show with collaboration partners for specific services" and what he needed most was growth capacity - people who could take responsibility for whole areas of work and help him build the foundations of a credible organisation. He said, "I actually had multiple gaps… I was looking for partners and growth capacity. I managed to fill that through Reach."

Building capacity to enable growth

Using Reach became a turning point. Joshua posted a series of briefs and found that he got regular - sometimes daily - applications. For the more specialist roles, he also searched directly. Through that approach he recruited two trustees - one a prospect research specialist with experience at major institutions, the other from a marketing background - completing the three-person board required for charitable status. As he explained, "it definitely elevated us as an organisation and we actually have just submitted our charity status application."

Alongside the trustees, Reach also helped Joshua bring in specialist leads. "One of them is around participatory democracy… she used to be head of participation in communities at the Scottish Parliament." He also recruited an advocacy lead, and a research coordinator supporting partnerships with the Universities of Glasgow, Strathclyde and Edinburgh. 

The impact of that collective expertise became visible quickly. One of the major highlights for Joshua this year was securing a meeting with Jupiter Artland. "It’s a huge big sculpture park just outside Edinburgh… I have a meeting with them and I think that was based on the back of the fact that we had built this capacity out and had these trustees on board." The introduction came from someone who had seen one of their trustee roles on Reach and got in touch. "He was the one who actually made the introduction. So it was really kind of giving us a lot of credibility to go out and attempt to try and speak to the people that we wanted to connect with."

Turning a one person idea into a movement

Looking back, Joshua says the platform consistently outperformed other routes: "I’ve tried with several different organisations, but by far Reach has been the most successful and fruitful in returning quality candidates… most all of my volunteers have come through Reach, and I now have about seven or eight in total."

He also sees Reach as part of his future, not just his early beginnings. "From coming from the very early stages of where I’m at to get to the kind of sense of being a credible organisation, it’s been a huge, huge, huge part of it… we’re trying to start a movement as much as a charity… so I can’t ever envision a time where we wouldn’t be using Reach."

This is the story of a founder with a big vision who, through skills-based volunteering, was able to build a team, gain confidence, and create the momentum needed to speak to the cultural institutions he once hoped to reach. It shows the power of purposeful connections: when the right people step in, a one-person idea can become a movement.