CLAPA across the country
This week’s staff blog comes from our Deputy CEO, Claire Cunniffe
As you may all be aware, there have been a number of staff changes at CLAPA over the last 12 months or so. Last week saw Chris Williams, our Volunteer Development Officer leave us to take up a role with a another charity. Chris will be known to many of you from his role supporting volunteers across 5 of our regions and, outside of work, as a dedicated fundraiser and Chair of the Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) Branch. Chris is still very keen to remain involved with CLAPA and will continue his volunteering and fundraising for us. So, whilst we wish Chris every success and happiness in his new role, we know it is not goodbye completely.
We will not be recruiting for another Volunteer Development Officer for the time being, but we are currently advertising for an Administrator to provide support primarily for the 5 regions which Chris used to cover. As you will be aware, recruitment takes time and we don’t expect to have someone in post until mid-November. In the meantime, I’d like to take this opportunity to reassure volunteers from those 5 regions that I will do everything I can to support you in this interim period. Once the Administrator is in post, they will become the main point of contact for our wonderful volunteers in Wales, Northern Ireland, North East, North West and South West England.
The Administrator post is a one-year fixed term contract based at the CLAPA office in Angel and is a great opportunity for someone who would like to work in the voluntary sector. We are looking for someone who is organised and has excellent communication skills. If you are interested in applying for the role, please have a look at the Recruitment Pack,which can be found here.
Our other 4 regions are looked after by our dedicated team of Regional Coordinators (RCs): Hamza Anwar (East of England), Claire Evans (Central England), Cherry LeRoy (South East of England) and Gillian McCarthy (Scotland). They work tirelessly to represent CLAPA in their regions and their roles are incredibly varied. All of our current RCs are funded by the Big Lottery Fund but the funding for the 3 England posts comes to an end at the end of November. Whilst we are in the process of applying for continuation funding, we won’t know the outcome of this until February. Thankfully, using CLAPA’s unrestricted funding, we have been able to secure the 3 roles until the end of February. Then, hopefully for another 3 years, if our funding application is successful.
We have a very ambitious target to secure funding for 9 Regional Coordinators by 2020 to cover all of our UK regions. To do this we need to double our income over the next few years, no easy task for our hard-working fundraising team. If you’d like to know more about how you can help us achieve our fundraising target, get in touch at [email protected].
