Every year in the first week of June, organisations around the UK celebrate Volunteers' Week, a national movement led by volunteering bodies in each of the four regions.

Here at Nottingham it provides us all the opportunity to say thank you and recognise the time and expertise shared by all of our wonderful alumni volunteers across the academic year!

Volunteers Week URN

Volunteers from our recent URN speed networking event on University Park

Our volunteers support a host of initiatives across the university, primarily to provide support, insight and inspiration for current students by sharing their own career paths as Nottingham graduates. Our Alumni Volunteering team works directly with each of the university's five faculties, as well as the business school, to recruit alumni to speak at a range of events throughout the year. We also support a number of programmes which span all faculties and focus on specific elements of the student community. Here's a few of this year's highlights:

Black Industry Connections and Empowerment Programme (BICEP)

One of our current flagship programmes, running since 2022, BICEP is designed to help students of Black heritage expand their personal and professional networks, meet inspiring Black role models working in a variety of industries and find empowerment and community during university.

In the three years of the scheme over 30 alumni have volunteered, spending time with student mentees directly in one to one sessions, as well as participating in larger group events.

Volunteering in numbers - 2024/25

  • 994 alumni volunteers
  • From 34 countries
  • 10,012 student beneficiaries
  • 115 volunteer roles

Future Connections

Another highlight was the launch of the Future Connections Programme at the end of 2024. Alumni from organisations including PwC, BCLP, and Foresight Group welcomed students for industry visits and networking sessions.

This programme forms part of the university’s Access and Participation Plan, which supports greater equality of opportunity for students from underrepresented backgrounds. A huge thank you to all the alumni who took part – your support continues to make a real difference.

Volunteers Week URN 2 MSc Marketing networking spring 2025 spring-volunteering-social-sciences Engineering update March 2025 800x

Learning with leaders, URN networking and more...

Throughout the year we regularly bring alumni back for our 'Learn with a leader' and 'Where are they now?' events, which enable students to hear directly from alumni working in a specific sector like Law or conversely see the broad range of career paths taken by alumni who studied a specific course.

Elsewhere we hosted networking events for students in our business school to hone their skills with our tame alumni volunteers, launched a new mentoring scheme - Pathways to Practice - to support students with an interest in exploring careers in the legal sector and welcomed back some of our finest University Radio Nottingham (URN) talent for a speed networking session with students looking at a career in the media.

Over the past 10 years of the volunteering programme at Nottingham we have had some incredible volunteers speak to our students, provide placements and or advise the University. It's amazing to see what an impact our volunteers have on the University of Nottingham community - inspiring so many people on their next steps. Thank you to everyone who has been involved - whether that be online or coming back to campus. Your time is so appreciated!
Rachael Green, Head of Alumni Volunteering

Interested in volunteering?

You can fill in our form to register your interest as a volunteer, which we'll then add to your record and contact you if a suitable opportunity arises.

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