New for 2025, our Volunteer scheme celebrates the amazing workplace volunteers who give their time to inspire children and young people.
It’s our way of saying thank you – recognising the people who help pupils see what jobs are really like, make new connections, and imagine exciting futures for themselves.
What’s it all about?
The Volunteer Scheme celebrates the time and effort you give each year and is our way of recognising how brilliant our volunteers are.
By engaging with young people, sharing your career journey, your challenges and what the job is actually like, you’re helping children to widen their knowledge, break stereotypes around roles and who can do what, and give them new ideas for their future.
How it works
You don’t need to do anything extra – when you join Inspiring the Future as a volunteer, you’re automatically part of the Volunteer scheme.
Each time you take part in an activity, your contribution is recorded in our system. Based on how many activities you do in a school academic year (September to July), you’ll receive a digital badge to celebrate your involvement.
Your awards
Your awards are a great way to share your involvement and contribution to helping young people discover so much about the REAL world of work.
- Blue level – is our entry level and recognises you joining as a volunteer.
- Silver level – celebrates your involvement in two activities in a school year.
- Gold level – is achieved by taking part in three or more activities in a school year.
In addition – when you complete your first volunteer activity, you’ll also receive a special digital badge to mark the moment.
At each level we award you with a digital badge to recognise your efforts.
You can add them to your LinkedIn profile, email signature, or other social media – to celebrate your contribution and inspire others to get involved too.
What next?
If you’re not already a volunteer, it’s really easy to join.
We welcome you whatever your length of time in work, whatever your role and whatever your sector. It’s diversity that makes our programme so valuable and unique. Everybody has a story to tell, and is a person that young people can relate to.
Frequently asked questions
You don’t need to complete an extra registration to receive our volunteer digital badges – when you sign up to Inspiring the Future as a volunteer you will be automatically enrolled and will receive your blue badge automatically, and further badges once you’ve volunteered through us with a school or college this academic year.
Any volunteering activities (both virtual and face to face) carried out via Inspiring the Future within this academic year count towards the digital badges. There are different badges to receive after you’ve completed your first, second and third volunteering activity!
Your digital badge will be emailed to the email address you used when registering with Inspiring the Future and you will also be able to see it when you login to your Inspiring the Future account. Once you’ve received it, you can download and share it as you choose! If you share it on LInkedin, please do tag us at Inspiring the Future so we can reshare and celebrate you!
Your badge will be emailed to you a few days after the date of your volunteering activity has passed. Please get in touch with us at enquiries@inspiringthefuture if you haven’t received it within a week so we can check and send it to you. It may be that the activity date has changed from what we have in our records.
Please get in touch with us at enquiries@inspiringthefuture if the date of your activity has changed from what was in the original invite, so we can make sure you receive your badge at the right time.
Here to help
Whatever your question about the programme or volunteering and what it entails, please get in touch by giving us a call or dropping us an email.
- Email us enquiries@inspiringthefuture.org
- Call us on 0207 566 4880
