CRM & Data Expert to assist re-design - Volunteer
20 hours ago
Bristol
Support our nature-based youth CIC by helping us design and set up a CRM that truly works for our team and participants. If you enjoy creating clear, human-centred systems, we’d love to work with you. What difference will you make? This role will make a transformative difference to The Birch Collective. As our organisation grows—both in our funded programmes and in the income-generating side of our work—we need systems that are streamlined, reliable and capable of supporting multiple strands of delivery. Your support in selecting and embedding the right CRM will strengthen every area of what we do, from frontline wellbeing work to organisational sustainability and long-term growth. A well-designed CRM will help us manage referrals more efficiently, respond quickly to young adults in need and ensure that no one slips through the gaps. It will enable us to store safeguarding information securely and consistently, giving our team confidence that we are meeting our responsibilities and protecting those we support. It will also improve how we track attendance, measure wellbeing outcomes and communicate clearly with participants—freeing up staff time and improving the quality of our support. Importantly, this role will also have a direct impact on our income-generating programmes, which include corporate give-back days, bespoke sessions, contracted deliveries and specialist services. At the moment, enquiries, bookings and communications for this work sit across multiple inboxes and spreadsheets. A CRM with strong communication and marketing tools will allow us to track leads, manage relationships, follow up consistently, and create a more coherent sales pipeline. This will help us grow the part of our organisation that brings in earned income—an essential element of our long-term financial resilience. Modern CRMs also offer powerful marketing features automated email flows, segmentation, targeted updates, branded communication templates and clearer insight into who engages with our work. With the right system in place, we will be able to strengthen our communications, reach more partners, promote opportunities more effectively and maintain better relationships with the organisations and individuals who commission us. This will ultimately support increased sales, stronger partnerships and a more stable income base to fund our core charitable work. Your contribution will leave a long-lasting legacy. The system you help us choose and embed will become the backbone of our organisation—shaping how we communicate, how we manage enquiries, how we evidence impact and how we sustain our work financially. By building strong foundations now, you will be helping us improve the lives of hundreds of young adults while also supporting the growth of a resilient, values-driven social enterprise. Your expertise won’t just support our systems—it will expand our impact and help secure our future. What are we looking for? We are looking for a volunteer who brings a blend of technical understanding, clarity of thought and a warm, collaborative approach. Because this role will shape a system that our team uses every day, the most important qualities are patience, good communication and the ability to translate technical concepts into simple, human-friendly language. We are a small, close-knit team working from a small office space in central Bristol, so we really value people who enjoy working alongside others, asking good questions and helping us understand the “why” behind each decision. Experience with CRM systems is essential—whether that’s implementation, system architecture, data migration, user onboarding or technical consultancy. You don’t need to be an expert in all of these areas, but you should be comfortable guiding a small charity through the key decisions involved in choosing and setting up a CRM. Familiarity with platforms commonly used in the voluntary sector—such as Beacon, Blackbaud eTapestry or CharityLog—would be a real advantage, but we are equally open to people with broader CRM experience who are confident assessing new tools. Because this role involves supporting us to choose and work alongside an external consultant, we are looking for someone who can read proposals critically, help us shape a clear brief and ensure we are commissioning the right kind of work. Experience liaising with consultants or suppliers, or supporting an organisation through a systems change or digital transformation process, would be extremely valuable. We would also appreciate someone who is confident thinking about data flows, structures and processes, even if not in a formal data-management role. Understanding how information moves through an organisation—and how to simplify or strengthen those pathways—will be key to helping us prepare for migration and embed good habits in the long term. An understanding of safeguarding considerations, data protection or confidentiality principles would also be helpful, though not essential. Equally important are the personal qualities. We would love to work with someone who is • Warm, approachable and good at putting people at ease, • Able to work collaboratively with a small team who juggle many responsibilities, • Happy to ask questions, challenge assumptions and help us prioritise what actually matters, • Patient and encouraging, especially when supporting staff who are not technically confident, • Organised and thoughtful, with an eye for detail and a clear sense of structure, • Values-driven, comfortable working with a youth-focused social enterprise with a strong relational ethos You do not need to be local, though being able to visit our small central Bristol office occasionally would be helpful. Remote volunteers are welcome as long as they are happy to work collaboratively via calls and shared documents. Above all, we are looking for someone who enjoys making systems clearer, simpler and more human—and who wants to use their skills to make a meaningful difference to the lives of the young adults we support. What will you be doing? We are looking for a skilled and thoughtful volunteer to guide us through selecting, setting up and embedding a new CRM system that genuinely supports our work. As a small but quickly growing organisation, our current spreadsheets and manual processes can’t keep pace with the volume of referrals, safeguarding information, attendance data, impact reporting and communications we now manage. We want a CRM that is simple, ethical, secure and designed around the real needs of our team and participants. We have secured funding to cover some of the key elements of this project, including time with a CRM consultant, support with data migration, staff training and the initial subscription fees. We are now seeking a volunteer whose independent insight can complement this funded support, helping us make confident decisions at each stage of the process. A central part of the role will involve helping us compare the CRM platforms most commonly recommended for charities of our size Beacon, Blackbaud eTapestry and CharityLog. We would value support assessing how well each one fits our context—our multi-programme model, safeguarding requirements, referral pathways, communication needs, reporting, user experience, cost and long-term sustainability. Your guidance will help us avoid choosing a system that looks good on paper but doesn’t work for our day-to-day reality. We also need support identifying and liaising with the right consultant to work alongside. This may include reviewing proposals, sense-checking technical language, helping us clarify our priorities and ensuring the consultant’s scope of work genuinely matches our needs. Your involvement will help us make the best use of the funding we have and avoid commissioning unnecessary or misaligned work. Alongside platform selection, we would appreciate help mapping our current data flows to prepare for migration. This means understanding how referrals, onboarding forms, attendance tracking, wellbeing measures, safeguarding notes and communication records currently move around the organisation—and advising us on what should be cleaned, redesigned or streamlined before migration begins. Good preparation here will ensure the funded migration support runs smoothly. Once the CRM is implemented, we would value support with team onboarding and training. Our staff are warm, committed and collaborative, but many are not technical specialists. We want the new system to feel accessible and empowering. You may help us design simple guides, run short demonstrations or support team members as they begin using the platform. Finally, we would appreciate a volunteer who can offer light-touch oversight for a short period after launch—checking that the consultant’s work is functioning correctly, ensuring data flows make sense and helping to resolve small issues before they become embedded. In short, we’re seeking a volunteer who can help us make thoughtful decisions, collaborate effectively with a consultant and support our team to adopt a CRM that will strengthen our work with young adults for years to come.