Celine McStravick was in Downing Street last October, meeting with the culture minister when Keir Starmer walked into the room and began talking about the importance of the UK voluntary sector.
This was not news to Celine, the chief executive of the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (NICVA), but she was pleased to hear words of encouragement from the top tier of government.
So it came as a shock a week later when that same government announced national insurance rises for all employers. This change will impact an estimated 76% of Northern Irish voluntary organisations, costing some of them “over £200,000 [a year],” Celine says. “Where are they going to find that money? They do not know. They have no idea what they’re going to do.”
The voluntary and charity sector in Northern Ireland is no stranger to budget constraints and a myriad of challenges force it to be agile and innovative. “We have the private sector’s entrepreneurial approach and the value space associated with the public sector,” Celine says. “A lot of our money is maybe only funded across one or two years. We are social entrepreneurs. We have to be innovative, fast and efficient.”
This requires a great workforce. The sector is made up of an estimated 200,000 volunteers and another 50,000 salaried employees, accounting for 6.7% of the workforce, according to NICVA. Chris Bunce, operations director of Charity Jobs NI, which recently held Northern Ireland’s first careers fair dedicated exclusively to charities, illustrates a vibrant array of recruitment opportunities within the volunteer and charity sector.
In 2024, 6,000 charity jobs were advertised on Community NI, a website dedicated to the sector. Opportunities range from care workers to social work, mental health workers and frontline health delivery practitioners. There is also a back office need for professional roles such as marketing, fundraising, HR and finance. A range of organisations are hiring – Autism Initiatives, Simon Community, Inspire Wellbeing, etc – from small playgroups up to huge employers. Barnardo’s – a health and social care charity that delivers services to children, young people and their families – employs almost 500 staff in Northern Ireland.
These organisations play a pivotal role in local communities. “The services they offer are pillars to our society,” Chris Bunce says. “They keep things running.” Celine McStravick “dreads to think” what Northern Ireland would look like without this sector. “Look at our current health and social care system – you can’t turn on the news without hearing about the waiting lists and people on beds in corridors. Can you imagine what it would be like if we didn’t have a voluntary community sector supporting people?”
What kind of candidates does the sector suit? Staff tend to be passionate, according to the NICVA chief. Some are starting their careers; others might be later in life. “Maybe they’re thinking, ‘I’m in a job that doesn’t make me that happy – it pays the mortgage but I’m looking for something more. I want to make a difference’,” Celine says. Barnardo’s employs many highly experienced people within its workforce, according to Michele Janes, chief executive, although “people’s values and their commitment to changing childhoods and to working alongside others to affect great outcomes” is the most important asset.
Homeless charity Simon Community has 21 hostels (temporary accommodation sites) scattered around Northern Ireland and is currently seeking to fill a number of vacancies. These include an accommodation and community support worker in Lisburn, a position with salary of between £22,675 and £24,108, and an assistant director of children’s services (salary between £54,457 and £70,016).
These salaries are not, admits Andrea McCooke, director of HR at Simon Community, as large as they might be in the public sector. Yet charities insist they make up for their lower pay grades with a greater work-life balance. Organisations like Simon provide a range of benefits (private healthcare, pension scheme, annual leave allowance, occupational sick pay, etc). In 2024, Simon Community NI achieved the Great Place to Work certification. Around 80% of their employees described the charity as a great place to work: 25% higher than the average satisfaction rate for a UK company. Andrea joined Simon three years ago from a local government sector. “The atmosphere and personality of this organisation makes a difference. Frontline staff could be going home at night having dealt with all sorts of things, but the reward they get from their work is evident. It is hard work but it’s very rewarding.”
Celine McStravick says: “We can’t offer you high salaries but we can offer you other values: work-life balance, learning and development and a career pathway. If you come into a charity it’s most likely that you’ll learn and move within it because we invest in our staff and we believe that once you get a good number of staff, it’s important to treat them well.”
Employees at Barnardo’s usually work their way up the ladder, says Michele Janes. “Some people will come to work in Northern Ireland and then work for the wider organisation in GB. We encourage colleagues to avail of further training whether through leadership management, coaching or supporting other staff or just trying something different. I have colleagues who started with us as volunteers and are now in management and leadership roles.”
However, NICVA released a report into the voluntary and community sector workforce in 2024 which found that 49% of organisations faced difficulties recruiting staff. A further 75.8% of participants identified salary levels as a barrier to recruitment. Almost 50% of participants reported incidents of burnout, which charities attribute to low wages and short-term funding instability. The increase in Employer National Insurance Contributions (NICs) threatens to further destabilise the sector. Government needs to address the lack of consistency around funding, insist charity organisations.
The annual budget is a constant concern “because we are waiting on news from year to year in terms of whether we are going to be awarded the budgets we require to keep going,” says Andrea McCooke of the Simon Community. “We need more security around budgets and funding. If there was more permanency, and budgets were secured over longer periods of time, it would give us more scope to structure our offering as an employer.”
Celine McStravick wants to see structural reform: stable, long-term funding and a workforce plan from government. “Our minister for the economy supports the private sector’s growth, development and innovation. I would like to see the same level of investment in growing the skills base of our sector to help us transform. There needs to be a culture shift to see us as core, not just to the delivery of services, but to the training of staff and the employment pathway.”
Volunteer and charity sector employees, despite their funding difficulties, report a level of fulfilment – making a meaningful difference in people’s lives and in local communities – that is perhaps not felt in other jobs. Workers at Barnardo’s “see the difference they make on a daily basis,” says Michele Janes, “even if it’s a small difference. That is really powerful.” “People are interested in the charity sector because they want a role that has a purpose and meaning,” says Chris Bunce, operations director of Charity Jobs NI. Andrea McCooke of Simon Community concurs. “These jobs not only impact society, they change lives.”