If partners are the backbone of Springboard Trust, our volunteers are the vital organs. With a crucial hand in supporting our school leaders’ leadership journey, volunteers build transparent and trusting relationships with Aotearoa New Zealand’s school leaders.
Springboard accepts volunteers from all sectors and levels of experience. The strength of our cross-sector model lies in principals and volunteers from completely different sectors finding common ground and building shared understanding, development and trust.
It is a challenging but incredibly rewarding role. Meeting school leaders for the first time, often those facing needs outside their area of expertise, can be a challenging experience. Yet time and time again, the feedback from our volunteers is that, working with Springboard is an amazing opportunity to support others and learn themselves through the experience.
How do volunteers help New Zealand principals?
When you work with Springboard Trust as a volunteer, we have five main roles:
Capacity Partner (as a 1:1 coach working alongside a school principal)
Impact Coach (working alongside a rural school principal)
Facilitator (facilitating either our flagship SLPP programme or our High Performing Leadership Teams programme)
Subject Matter Expert (working on a variety of projects supporting school leaders to support how them implementing their strategic plans)
Coach (as a 1:1 coach working alongside them as part of our Springboard Coaching for Leadership programme)
Additionally, we have some key one-day roles that come under the Subject Matter Expert umbrella, including Critical Friends, who provide support to leadership teams in our Skills Workshops.
Please note that many of our volunteer roles will operate outside of New Zealand’s metropolitan centres – where there may be a need to work with individuals or teams from various regions or using technology to support virtual coaching.
The benefits of being a volunteer
Common feedback from volunteers is that, despite feeling at the beginning they had nothing to bring to the table for principals, they were able to affect true positive change through the programmes.
Additionally, volunteers consistently report that they bring back enhanced leadership capabilities and social impact understanding to the organisations they come from.
To find out about current volunteer opportunities with Springboard Trust, please contact our Volunteer Manager Rebecca Brown at rebeccab@springboardtrust.org.nz!
