Volunteer your time, skills and talents

Start by filling in our online form and we’ll be in touch to arrange a time for a virtual chat. We’ll talk through our volunteering opportunities, and will answer any questions you might have. This can take anything from 15 to 45 minutes. depending on what you’d like to do and how much you need to know. At this stage, it’s helpful for us to understand the kind of volunteering opportunity that's right for you, and how much time you are happy to commit.

After the call, we’ll ask you to complete a DBS check and provide contact details for two references. We’ll give you all the information and instructions that you’ll need to be able to do that.

Once these are completed, you’ll have to attend volunteer training consisting of two parts – a General Volunteer Induction, and training relevant to your role (such as specific training, sighted-guide training, or mentor induction training). At the moment, our training sessions are held online, and you can be attend in the afternoon, evening or on a weekend.

Once you’ve completed the steps above, you’ll become an RSBC approved volunteer and will be able to join in with our volunteering opportunities.

Please note that the whole process can take anything from two weeks to a month, depending on the type of volunteering role you’re interested in.

Your volunteering commitment depends on how you want to support us, on your lifestyle, and on other commitments such as work, university, hobbies, family and friends.

You’ll always have control over your volunteering time, as most of our volunteering opportunities are very flexible.

You can have the option to volunteer just once for one-off events, which can be for short periods of time. Even an hour can help us and the children and families we support.

Or you can volunteer regularly, say once a month, or several times a week. It all depends on the time you can spare, and you can increase or decrease your involvement at any time.

Yes, we reimburse travel expenses of up to £10.

Yes! We’ll give you all the training you will need. 

Standard training is covered in our General Volunteer Induction, where you’ll learn all about RSBC, and about vision impairment, safeguarding and volunteering.

For certain roles, additional training is required, such as Sighted-Guide training where you’ll learn techniques to help guide blind or partially sighted people. Training may also be specific to your role, and cover topics like mentoring or fundraising.

Some roles do require a DBS certificate to allow you to volunteer.

As we work with vulnerable children and young people, anybody who has direct contact with them needs to be DBS checked.

However, if you volunteer as one off event volunteer on our fundraising events, no DBS check is needed.

Don’t worry, we're all human.

Before you start to volunteer, we’ll equip you with the tools, guidance and knowledge you need to minimise any risks.

We spend quite a lot of time during our volunteer training talking about vision impairment; how to talk about it and how to behave. And we’ll always trust your common sense and good judgement to know what to do.

Of course! Please get in touch, and we can talk about which opportunities would work best for you.

Volunteering is a great way to enhance your career or to boost your employability.

Besides learning something new, volunteering can boost your confidence and teach you new skills that you can use to develop your professional experience.

Yes! For anything volunteering related, please email volunteers@rsbc.org.uk and we will get back to you as soon as possible.