Volunteer CiviCRM Support Advisor

What will you be doing?

Embracing Age is a small, volunteer-led Christian charity reducing loneliness and isolation among older people living in care homes. We support around 160 volunteers and a small staff team across Richmond upon Thames, Hampshire, West Sussex, and the Isle of Wight.

CiviCRM is at the heart of how we operate. We use it to manage our volunteers, donor relationships, safeguarding records, regional reporting, and online forms. It is not a nice-to-have; it is operationally critical to our work and to the people we serve.

We are looking for a knowledgeable, reliable volunteer to provide ongoing CiviCRM support to our small staff team. This is not a full rebuild. We have a functioning system that needs consistent, expert guidance to keep it running well and grow with us.

You would be making a direct difference. Every improvement to our database helps us reach more isolated older people, support more volunteers, and demonstrate our impact to funders who make our work possible.

Key tasks will include reviewing and fixing forms and workflows, improving volunteer and donor reporting, reducing duplicate contacts and strengthening data quality, advising on best practice for a small charity context, supporting integrations or automations that could save the team time, and helping us document our setup so it is sustainable and well understood going forward.

You would work directly with our CEO. The team is warm, committed, and genuinely appreciative of skilled support. We are not a technically demanding organisation; we simply need someone who knows CiviCRM well and wants to put that knowledge to good use.

We are looking for around two to four hours per month on a fully remote, flexible basis. We will fit around you.

If you have ever wanted to use your technical skills to tackle one of the most pressing social challenges of our time, loneliness among older people, this is a meaningful and well-supported place to do it.

What are we looking for?

The most important thing is solid hands-on experience with CiviCRM. We are a small charity with a functioning system and we need someone who can hit the ground running, diagnose issues confidently, and offer practical guidance without needing extensive briefing on the basics.

Beyond technical knowledge, we are looking for someone who understands the charity or voluntary sector context. Our team is small, our resources are limited, and our priorities are driven by mission rather than budget. 

Specifically we are hoping for:

Experience configuring and administering CiviCRM, including forms, workflows, reporting, and contact management. Familiarity with volunteer management or donor relationship modules would be particularly valuable. The ability to communicate clearly with a non-technical team, translating what can be complex system issues into plain language that our staff can understand and act on. A patient, methodical approach and a genuine commitment to following through.  Reliability matters enormously to us. An interest in documenting their work as they go, so that the knowledge they bring is captured and does not leave with them.

We do not expect perfection and we do not need someone who knows everything. We do need someone who is honest about what they know, communicates well, and genuinely wants to help a small charity use its systems more effectively.

If you have ever supported a nonprofit with their CRM and found it rewarding, this role will feel very familiar and we think you will enjoy it

What difference will you make?

Loneliness among older people is one of the most serious and underrecognised health challenges we face as a society. For the residents we support, many of whom have little or no regular contact with family or friends, a consistent befriending relationship can be transformative. Our volunteers make that possible.

But behind every volunteer visit, every Card of Kindness sent, and every new befriending match made, there is a database making it work. CiviCRM is the engine that keeps our organisation running. It holds our volunteer records, tracks our donor relationships, manages our safeguarding information, powers our online forms, and generates the reports that tell funders our work is making a difference.

When it works well, our small team can focus on what matters most: supporting older people and the volunteers who befriend them. When it does not, that capacity is lost.

The volunteer who steps into this role will not just be fixing a database. They will be directly enabling a charity to operate effectively, grow sustainably, and demonstrate its impact at a time when we are expanding into new regions and developing new programmes. Their work will strengthen the foundation on which everything else we do is built.

For a small charity with limited resources, having a skilled, trusted CiviCRM advisor is genuinely significant. It means we can make better decisions, reduce risk, and build a system that serves us well for years to come rather than one we are constantly firefighting.

The difference this volunteer makes will be felt not just by our staff team, but by the older people whose lives we are here to change.

Before you apply

Thank you for considering this role. We know skilled volunteers have choices about where they give their time and we do not take that lightly.

When you apply, a brief note about your CiviCRM experience and what draws you to Embracing Age would be helpful. We do not need anything lengthy.

We will review applications as they arrive rather than waiting for a closing date, so if you are a strong fit we will be in touch promptly. 

We are a small, friendly team and the process will reflect that. We hope to hear from you soon.