Why has my volunteer profile not been accepted?

Why am I not able to use Reach to volunteer?

There are a couple of reasons as to why we can’t welcome you to Reach the moment:

You don’t currently have three or more years’ professional experience in one of our skill areas.

We are always glad when people want to volunteer, no matter their skill sets and experience. However, our aim is to support charities and non profit organisations to find volunteers with the skills they need.  In order to make sure this happens, we ask that all volunteers have at least three years’ professional experience - paid or unpaid - in the skills they’d like to offer, and when we review your work history, this is what we are looking for.  

We ask for three years as this amount of time allows for experience to develop. This also means that our volunteers can offer organisations ideas, advice and expertise that is firmly rooted in practical application, so organisations can get the help they need to achieve their aims.

If we are not able to register you with us, we will always provide other routes into volunteering and we would encourage you to pursue those. 

Find out more about our review process.

You are not based in the UK

Unfortunately, as a small charity with limited resources, we can only accept people based in the UK. This includes volunteers originally from the UK that are currently living abroad. We would encourage you to search for volunteer opportunities in your region, and we provide a list of alternatives in this article.

Please get in touch if you do find yourself back in the UK. 

You have submitted an incomplete profile 

If when reviewing your profile, we do not have enough information about your experience, or it has been only partly completed, we will not be able to approve it, and we will get in touch with you to ask you to complete it. 

Your skills aren’t a match for the role you’ve applied for

If you have applied for a role, but you do not have the skills and experience the organisation is looking for, we will not be able to pass on your application. 

We understand that you might be looking to change careers, or want to gain completely new skills, and would like to use volunteering to do this, however, organisations often do not have a lot of time and resources, and are ideally looking for people who can use their expertise, and get started straight away. We encourage you to apply for roles where your existing experience and skills are a good match.

Can I ask you to review your decision?

Of course. If you think there is anything we have missed or not taken into account, please do contact us and we will review again. Our decision is based on the information that is provided to us, so please do ensure that your work history, such as your LinkedIn profile and CV are up to date. Although we cannot promise that we will reverse the decision,  we do commit to doing a review when requested. 

For a review, please contact us on [email protected] or 0203 925 7721.

I really want to volunteer, what are the alternatives?

The following Knowledge Base articles include details of other volunteer platforms, which we hope you find useful. You may also like to contact the charities that you are interested in directly, to ask what opportunities they have available.   

• Alternatives to Reach
• How and why does Reach review volunteers.

Don’t forget - you can always come back to Reach once you have built up your experience or are back in the UK, we would be delighted to hear from you.