About volunteering with Shelter Scotland

We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds, especially those with lived experience of homelessness or bad housing.

You have to be aged 18 or older to volunteer for roles in our offices or with our Community Fundraising teams.

If you're aged 14 to 18 you can volunteer in our shops. You'll need consent from a parent or carer if you're under 16.

All our volunteers must be based in Scotland. Please view the role adverts for more information on where volunteer opportunities are based.

See our current volunteering opportunities to find out more.

Our roles are as flexible as possible to suit your availability.

You could volunteer every week, support us at a one-off event, or somewhere in between. We can adjust your time with us if your circumstances change.

We're committed to ensuring that no-one misses out because they can’t afford to volunteer. We pay back all reasonable out-of-pocket expenses that occur during volunteering, in line with our Volunteer Expenses Policy.

You can volunteer if you receive benefits. We reimburse out-of-pocket expenses for volunteering, and these expenses do not count as income for benefits assessments.

Find out more from Citizens Advice about how volunteering affects your benefits.

When you start volunteering with us, you'll get an induction and training that's relevant to your role, as well as ongoing support.

It’s important to us that our volunteer opportunities are inclusive. As part of the recruitment and induction, please talk to your main contact about your health and wellbeing needs and we'll do our best to make appropriate adjustments to the role wherever possible. You can also get support from our Mental Health First Aiders and assistance programme.

We pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming volunteers with a range of life experiences. Having a criminal record doesn’t automatically make you unable to volunteer with us. We’ll talk to you about your conviction and anything else you’d like us to know, for example circumstances surrounding the conviction or how things have changed since.

Occasionally a conviction may impact some aspects of the volunteer role, but we recognise the skills you bring as an individual and will do our best to find a suitable role for you or make minor adjustments to the one you applied for.

The documents you need to give us depend on your circumstances and the role you've applied for.

Young Person Consent Form

If you're under 16, your parent or carer has to give their consent for you to volunteer with us. We ask for their contact details when you apply and we'll send them a Young Person’s Consent Form. This has to be completed and returned before we take your application further.

Conviction self-declaration form

For all volunteer roles with Shelter Scotland, you’ll need to tell us about any unspent convictions. For some roles, we’ll email you a form to complete and return.

Roles which require a Disclosure Scotland Check

Not all our volunteer roles require a Disclosure Scotland Check. The role profile or advert will say if a check is required. A check might not have any impact on your volunteering.

After you’ve been offered the role, we'll ask you to fill in an online form with your details. You'll have to provide proof of your identify and tell us your 5 year address history.

We know that applying for a Disclosure Scotland Check may be new for some volunteers and we're happy to help you complete it. Any information on these checks stays confidential.

Volunteer Agreement

Once you’re ready to start in your role, you’ll be asked to sign a volunteer agreement outlining what you can expect from us and what we ask from you in return. This is not a legal document or contract and is not intended to create any legal relationship between us.

Please email us at VolunteerScotland@shelter.org.uk for more information about documents you need.