Join a community of people who are passionate about ending homelessness.
In society, our lives are connected. We all depend on others for help and support.
When you volunteer for Crisis, you will be joining a friendly and supportive community of people who care about ending homelessness for everyone, for good.
Whether serving customers in one of our stylish high street charity shops, doing essential admin in the office or working directly with people experiencing homelessness, our volunteers make a huge difference.
Volunteering with us is a great way to meet new, like-minded people, gain useful skills, build confidence, and learn more about how homelessness and housing insecurity can be ended in your local community.
We welcome people from all backgrounds. Our volunteers include young professionals, retired workers, students, asylum seekers, people with lived experience of homelessness, and more.
Whoever you are and however you choose to volunteer, you will be part of a community that is contributing towards a better society for everyone.
Our volunteers make our work possible, supporting people out of homelessness and campaigning for the changes needed to solve it altogether.
To become a volunteer, all you need is enthusiasm and a desire to make a difference. For most roles, you don’t need any experience to volunteer, although any existing skills or qualifications you’d like to bring to your volunteer role are always welcome.
We will give you all the training and support to make you feel secure and confident in your role.
Find a Charity Shop or E-commerce volunteer role
“Being part of the volunteering community is great because you get to meet loads of different people in different paths of life. Everyone has a similar vibe about them. They are talkative, enthusiastic and have this energy, and it catches like wildfire, so you rub off on each other."— Nathaniel, Christmas volunteer
Our Skylight centres provide hands on, one-to-one support for anyone facing or at risk of homelessness. We help people secure a safe home, find work or training opportunities, access services and look after their mental health and wellbeing.
As a Skylight volunteer, you could be helping to support our members with any one of these things. You might also be providing a warm welcome on the reception desk, answering the phones, or just chatting with members and offering a supportive ear.
Whether you have a few hours spare each week or a few days, you could make a real difference by volunteering in one of our shops. You’ll help us keep the shop tidy, organised and running well, so that we can raise vital funds to support more people out of homelessness.
Our shops have a role for everyone. From styling our displays to sorting stock, serving customers and making content for social media, there’s plenty of opportunities to use your unique skills or to learn new ones.
If you love organising events and getting involved with your local community, you’ll fit right in as a fundraising volunteer. Fundraisers help run a range of fun activities and events, interact with supporters and raise money while inspiring others to get involved.
We have local fundraising teams spread across the UK and in our London Head Office too.
Our e-commerce team power the Crisis online shop. They sort donations, prepare items for sale, take photographs, write up product descriptions and package orders to send to customers. We couldn’t do it without them.
Thanks to the team’s hard work, thousands of pre-loved items find a new home each year and help us raise vital funds to help end homelessness.
Christmas is a time to bring people together, and at Crisis that’s no different. Our volunteer community gets together to provide warmth, companionship and essential services to people facing homelessness at one of the toughest times of the year. We hand out hampers, serve hot meals, organise events and provide wellbeing support to help people feel less alone over the festive period.
Many of our Christmas volunteers tell us it’s a life-changing experience and they return year after year to offer their support.
If those options aren’t suitable, there are also lots of other ways to get involved. Could you help raise awareness or funds? Would you like to cheer our charity runners on? Do you have a specialist skill that could help with our work, or could you encourage your workplace to become a corporate sponsor?
We need people from all backgrounds and with a wide range of skills to help us end homelessness for good. Whatever you have to offer, we have a way for you to get involved.
We want you to have a great experience with us at Crisis - so below we have answered some of our most asked questions about volunteering with us.
If you have a question and can't find the answer, please do reach out to us at Crisis Volunteering.
We are really excited that you are thinking of joining us. We have roles available across lots of different departments. To find a role you can search by department, such as volunteering in our shops or with our members, or you can search by location. Find a role that suits you and then click on the apply now button.
You will be asked to sign-up with us first (if you haven’t already signed-up) and then you will need to complete a short application form for the role you are interested in.
For some roles, we might invite you for a meeting (this may be in person or online) so we can find out more about you and you can find out more about us. This is really informal and nothing to be nervous about. For other roles such as in our shops you may be asked to do a trial shift.
If you are over 18 and have the right to volunteer in the UK, then we would love for you to volunteer with us.
To find volunteer opportunities for under 18s why not contact your local Volunteer Centre or take a look at V-inspired’s website.
We are delighted you have applied to volunteer with Crisis. We cannot end homelessness without our volunteers. You should have received an email thanking you for your application (please check your email junk folder if you haven’t).
Our teams will be in touch with you shortly about the next steps of your volunteering journey. This may take up to a couple of weeks at busy times. If you have been waiting a particularly long time, please email Crisis Volunteering.
Not all our roles require references, but those volunteering in our Skylights and Head Office do. We will ask for one reference. For some of our roles, we will ask that this is a professional or academic reference – this can include references from other volunteering roles you have done. If you have any questions about references, please don’t hesitate to ask us.
Some of our roles may require a disclosure check; you will be able to see this on the role description. If the role does, we use a digital system to manage this and we will request and pay for it (where payment is needed).
Some roles may require a basic disclosure check, others may require an enhanced disclosure check. A basic disclosure check contains details of any convictions that are unspent, whereas an enhanced disclosure check will contain details of both spent and unspent convictions, cautions, reprimands, and warnings. If you want to know more about these checks, please visit the Disclosure and Barring Service or Disclosure Scotland.
We want to ensure all our volunteers feel equipped and confident in their role, so we will ask you to complete some essential learning including topics such as safeguarding, equality, diversity and inclusion and data protection, as well as role specific training for some positions. Completing this learning will help you and us ensure we keep everyone safe and maintain the privacy of people’s information, as well as creating an inclusive and welcoming environment for everyone. There will also be opportunities to access additional optional learning through our e-learning offer and through your supervisors.
For roles in our Skylights, you will receive an induction with your Volunteer & Involvement Lead, alongside role specific training. All volunteers, whatever department they volunteer in will have a named supervisor for any questions they have/support they need and to ensure you feel connected to Crisis.
Volunteer wellbeing is really important to us, so we will help you to feel comfortable during your volunteering. We do this in a range of ways depending on your role.
If there are particular skills you want to develop please do talk to us and we will do our best to support you with this.
The voice and experiences of those with lived experience are vital in ensuring we shape our work to meet the needs of those experiencing homelessness. We encourage anyone with lived experience to apply for our volunteer roles.
We also involve members and people with lived experience of homelessness in opportunities across the whole of our organisation, including our Experts by Experience Panel. For more details, please contact the Member Involvement team.
We want everyone to feel they can volunteer at Crisis and value diversity, promote equality and challenge discrimination. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds, including those with lived experience.
Crisis is committed to making the organisation as accessible and inclusive as possible and we want to support individuals with a physical or mental health condition, mobility impairment or who identify as neurodiverse to volunteer with us.
We will try to adapt all roles to make them accessible and where this isn’t possible, we will try to support you in finding a role that works for you. If you think that your disability may affect the role that you are applying for then you can either let us know on your application form or let your Volunteer and Involvement Lead/ Volunteer Supervisor know when you meet with them or at induction. Alternatively, get in touch with us at Crisis Volunteering.
Volunteers’ Week is a UK-wide campaign held in early June each year to celebrate and recognise the contributions of volunteers across the country. The week looks to highlight the special work volunteers do throughout our communities; it’s a chance to celebrate, inspire and reflect.
At Crisis, Volunteers’ Week allows us to acknowledge the crucial contribution volunteers make to our work to end homelessness.
