Volunteer with us

Why volunteer?

There’s a lot to be gained personally from volunteering with us:

• Networking – meet and get to know new people within your field of interest and in your local area.
• Build career options – test drive potential career options with hands-on experience. Whilst volunteering with SCI, you can talk to people working in your prospective field, or get involved organising an event on the subject area. This will allow you to make informed choices on what your next steps should or could be.
• More skill, more opportunity – develop skills and share experiences that may enhance what is on your CV/resumé, and eventually lead to paid work opportunities.
• Grow your confidence – sharing new experiences with new people puts you in situations that teach you how to project yourself in a more confident way. Learning that you can think on your feet at an event, develop key ideas for a Group to progress with or successfully manage a group of diverse people, can all help to build your confidence.
• Paid expenses – we realise that your time is a valuable enough contribution, and so any financial expenses that you incur in doing our work we reimburse, so you are never out of pocket.
• Ongoing support – count on the SCI Membership team's support five days a week so that you are never overwhelmed by your chosen task and can turn to us for direction, advice and information, whenever you need it.
• References – we are happy to write you a reference at any time to promote the work you have assisted us with and the successes you have achieved.
• Recognition – SCI offers a Distinguished Service Award (DSA), and its prestigious Lampitt Award to volunteers that have contributed a lot of time and effort to support our charitable objectives and promote our activities. It is our way of saying a big thankyou for all your work. More
• The Young Ambassadors scheme gives younger members the opportunity to take part in Group Committees, which may include the chance to speak at an event or contribute to publications. More

What can you do?

Volunteers can contribute with a variety of tasks: some assume key Committee roles within our Regional and Technical Interest Groups, some mentor other members; others support our Groups and SCI through one-off contributions. Even a small commitment can have a lasting effect upon the Society and its stakeholders.

Your time is precious

For this reason, we want to make sure that you only do what is manageable for you and what fits around your day to day activities.

We work on the basis of 'episodic volunteering', which means that you can do bite-sized bits to support us such as:

• Helping us with the registration desk for an event
• Helping us meet and greet at events
• Writing a one-off article on one of our events or assisting with a survey
• Conducting quick scans on our regions to help our Regional Groups' understanding of what is currently relevant with regards to the commercial application of chemistry in their area.
• Conduct quick scans within our SCI technical interest areas to give our Technical Groups a snapshot of what is currently topical and relevant in their field.

Get involved!

Volunteering is your chance to exchange knowledge, network and collaborate with your peers. If you’d like to get involved, let us know how much time you can dedicate and we will find something that works for you.

Contact communications@soci.org