Senior Volunteer Coordinator
Who are we?
We are Manchester Students’ Union, the biggest SU in the country, supporting over 48,000 students throughout their time at university. We help to make student life the best it can be by supporting students to campaign for change, creating opportunities to meet new people, providing employment opportunities, providing advice and support and being a safe place on campus.
We are a values-centred organisation that employs around 90 permanent, full-time members of staff. We recruit a wide range of roles throughout the year within all our departments from our Commercial team operating Manchester Academy Venues, 13 Media, Bar 532 & Kitchen and Corridor Coffee to our Student Activities, Student Engagement, Marketing and Communications, Finance, HR and Facilities teams. Our team of around 400 part-time, studying staff are instrumental in providing to support to all departments as well as leading major projects like Student Angels. When you join UMSU, you’ll be immersed in an environment that empowers staff to make great things happen and we're always on the lookout for innovative, passionate, and proactive people to join us.
Our values are really important to us and shape the work that we do every day. As part of our recruitment process, we want you to demonstrate how your experiences, behaviours and skills align with our values. You can find more detailed explanations of our values on our website.
About the role
The Senior Volunteer Coordinators play a vital role in ensuring an outstanding volunteer experience for these student leaders, as this creates the foundation for meaningful engagement with fellow students and the wider community.
As a Senior Volunteer Coordinator, you will lead on the volunteer experience across four key areas of student-led activity:
•Access All Areas – a volunteering programme that makes university education more accessible for over 500 young people each year.
•Student Action Volunteering – a community-based volunteering programme with around 18 projects tackling issues including homelessness and environmental sustainability.
•Student Fundraising – supporting students to raise money for local, national and international causes, with over £200,000 raised in 2023-24.
•Student Arts & Media – three award-winning media outlets plus a range of arts and performance-based student groups.
You’ll continue to advance the Union’s approach to volunteer management by recruiting, training and providing ongoing support for hundreds of student leaders, as well as coaching a team of full and part time staff to develop their own volunteer management skills. Recognising the impact of financial and time pressures on students, you will develop student leadership programmes that inspire them to build communities and develop skills to progress in their future careers alongside completing their studies. Working in partnership with external organisations, you’ll ensure that our student groups run activities that are beneficial to the wider community whilst providing an excellent experience for participating students.
As a Senior Volunteer Coordinator, you’ll ensure that students are at the heart of all your decision-making, continually improving our student leadership programmes according to our impact data so that students become empowered community leaders and active citizens.
There are two Senior Volunteer Coordinators based in the team, alongside colleagues similarly focused on at-scale student engagement across a range of programmes. The team aims to create opportunities for students to build and participate in communities that are inclusive, sustainable, ambitious, and impactful, and the Senior Volunteer Coordinators will play a key role in achieving this vision for our student leadership programmes.
Ensuring that our student leadership opportunities are meaningful, developmentally beneficial, and have the interests of our student community at their heart is important to us, so if you’re eager to help students fulfil their potential and have a positive impact on the world around them, you will thrive in this role. You’ll always have the right support around you to do your job well and will see the positive impact you’re having on students and the wider community in real-time, directly contributing to an outstanding student experience.
Please read the full role profile before applying, as well as our guide to recruitment.
Details
Salary: £27,013 - £30,237
Contract: Permanent / Fixed-Term until April 2027
Hours: 35 hours per week
Eligibility: Open to applicants with relevant skills and experience who are eligible to work in the UK, subject to a satisfactory DBS check.
Our Reward Package
You'll get access to our reward package which you can see here.
Recruitment Guide
We have a guide that explains our full recruitment process. We recommend reading through this before beginning an application.
If you are invited to interview with us, we will share our interview questions in advance so you can prepare your responses. We’re more interested in hearing about your experiences and ideas than in testing your memory, and so we want you to feel as prepared as possible.
AI Use
GenAI tools, like ChatGPT, are revolutionising how we approach a whole host of tasks at work. As a future-focused employer, we believe in embracing, not banning, these tools. However, as with all tech, some ways of using it are better than others. You can use GenAI to refine and articulate your ideas. It’s a tool to help structure your thoughts and improve clarity, not to replace your unique voice and experiences. Please don’t just copy and paste what AI tells you to write.
We recommend you read our guide on how to approach the use of AI within our recruitment process:
Inclusivity and Accessibility
We are committed to equality of opportunity, and we work hard to ensure we appoint based on skill and values.
We particularly encourage applications from Disabled or Black, Black British, Black Welsh, Caribbean or African candidates as these groups are currently underrepresented in our staff team.
If you have any accessibility requirements or require adjustments to support you to apply to work with us, please get in touch. We can offer reasonable adjustments at all stages of our recruitment process.
We are proud to be a Disability Confident employer. Under this scheme, we aim to offer an interview to candidates who declare a disability and meet the minimum essential criteria for the role. Minimum criteria are marked with an asterisk on the person specification. However, during periods of exceptionally high application volumes or peak recruitment times (i.e. July, August and September), it may not always be possible to guarantee an interview for every eligible candidate. In such cases, we will take steps to ensure that the process remains fair, consistent, and inclusive.
Recruitment Timeline
Applications opened: 02/02/2026
Applications close: 02/03/2026 23:59 pm
Interviews: 17/03/2026
Role Commencing: 06/04/2026
We may close applications early if we receive a high volume of applications. We recommend that you apply as soon as possible to avoid disappointment. Once the vacancy has closed, we’re unable to accept late applications to ensure a fair process for all candidates.
Contact
People Team:
You can contact the People Team with any questions regarding this vacancy or our recruitment process.
Email: jobs.su@manchester.ac.uk
Phone: 0161 306 3279
Hiring Manager: Kira Mccormack
You can contact the hiring manager with any questions regarding this vacancy or our recruitment process.
Email: kira.mccormack@manchester.ac.uk