Volunteer

Whether you work directly with our members in our befriending services, get involved in advocacy as an ODL ambassador, or run fundraising and social events, all our volunteers are invaluable to our work - join our team at Opening Doors now and help make a huge difference to the lives of LGBTQ+ people over 50.

Our amazing volunteers are an integral part of our organisation. We currently have over 280 volunteers who support us in roles in the delivery of services to LGBTQ+ people over 50. From communication and engagement, getting involved in fundraising activities, helping us run social events for members and providing administration support, we have a whole range of opportunities for you! Volunteer with us now and be a part of something incredible!

To find out more about how you can support us, email [email protected]

What do our volunteers say?

Our volunteers tell us they like to work with us for a vast array of reasons:

To develop excellent skills and gain valuable experiences for future careers
The inter-generational friendships
The sense of wellbeing, purpose and satisfaction that accompanies supporting older members of the LGBTQ+ community
A valuable opportunity to develop a deeper understanding and awareness of experiences from sections of the LGBTQ+ community often underrepresented and ignored
A greater and more positive engagement with their own community

To hear more about what it’s like to volunteer with us, check out Ben’s story as a befriending volunteer:

Read about our volunteers here

Our Opportunities

Are you looking to develop a particular skillset or bring one of your own to ODL? Have you got specialist knowledge that you think will be useful to our work? Do you have a passion to support the most isolated in the LGBTQ+ community? Explore our wide range of opportunities for you. Whatever your reason to join ODL, we’d love to hear from you!

Unfortunately, due to the current Covid-19 restrictions, most of our face-to-face programmes are suspended. We look forward to resuming these programmes soon and would love you to join our team! We do have other opportunities available like our telefriending programme, which remains a vital support system for our members.

If you are interested in getting involved with Opening Doors, check out the opportunities below:

Befriending and Telefriending

Due to the current Covid-19 pandemic, our telefriending programme is hugely important for our members suffering from isolation, loneliness and other mental health issues. The majority of our active volunteer currently sit within our befriending programmes and are split between telefriending and in-person befriending.

Although we have paused our face-to-face befriending services at this time, we have been running our new telephone befriending service. We have been very lucky to have been able to recruit a fabulous cohort of new telefriending volunteers the current crisis, but unfortunately at the current time we haven't got any vacancies for befriending or telefriending volunteers. If you would like to volunteer and be placed on a waiting list please follow the link below.

Groups

Alongside the befriending programmes, our volunteers help run a number of regular groups and events for our members, such as our Rainbow Café and Coffee and Cake drop-ins.

***Since the first lockdown in March all of our Groups and most of our activities have been held online. Due to government restrictions, we are unable to say when face to face social groups will resume. The few activities we have been able to arrange between the lockdowns have strictly observed social distancing guidelines.***

Ambassadors

The volunteers in our ambassador programme form a key part of our commitment to ensuring the voices of people from the older LGBTQ+ communities are heard by service providers and policy makers.

Support and Administration

We also have a number of key administration roles for volunteers which are vital in supporting the work we do. These include communications & fundraising, BSL interpreters and member engagement programmes

Across all of our available volunteer roles, we welcome people on the basis of their abilities. We aim to work with, and are particularly keen to hear from, volunteers as broad as the members we want to reach, who represent a wide range of faith, age, race, gender, sexuality, disability and socio-economic and cultural backgrounds.