Volunteering in 2026 and Beyond - Speakers

Sally Munday is the Head of Volunteering at the MS Society, where she leads the organisation’s vision for inclusive, empowering, and high impact volunteering experiences. She is passionate about ensuring volunteer leaders have the resources, tools, and knowledge they need to confidently support volunteers and deliver brilliant outcomes for the communities they serve.

Sally has worked in volunteering and community development throughout her entire career, spanning the heritage sector, public sector and now the charity sector. Before joining the MS Society she worked as Head of Volunteering at Home-Start UK, where she championed high quality volunteer practice and strengthened support for families across the UK.

With extensive experience shaping volunteer strategy, infrastructure and culture, Sally is dedicated to creating environments where volunteers feel valued, equipped, and inspired to make a difference.

Debbie joined The Felix Project in 2024 as Head of Volunteering. Following the recent merger with FareShare UK she is now the new national Head of Volunteering for the UK wide merged organisation.

Previously Debbie held a number of senior leadership roles at Marie Curie including Head of Volunteering and Chief of Staff. Here, she implemented a new HCM system (Oracle) and a new Target Operating Model across staff and volunteers before building a new People strategy. Before this she was Head of Volunteering at The Children's Society.

Having volunteered since she was 14 Debbie holds a strong respect for all volunteers but also the huge power of deploying a strong volunteering strategy. She is especially passionate about the impact a volunteer element can have on workforce planning.
Debbie graduated (a long time ago!) from The University of Exeter who have since named a volunteering award in recognition of her contribution to the sector.

Debbie has two children (Lottie aged 4 and Theo aged 2) and is a strong champion for supporting parents returning from parental leave and trying to make workplaces easier environments for new parents. Not to mention the ongoing balance of being a working parent!

Rachel King (she/her) is the National Volunteering Manager at RDA UK. She has worked in volunteering and community development across the public, private and third sectors over the last decade, including youth work and education, criminal justice, sport and physical activity, and more recently wildlife and conservation. Rachel brings lived experience of Bipolar Disorder and neurodivergence to her work in volunteer leadership and cares deeply about creating environments where people can thrive and grow in ways that are meaningful for them, whilst contributing to causes they care about. Rachel first experienced volunteering as a young person and has continued volunteering throughout her adult life. She recognises that this has only been possible due to a level of privilege, which continues to shape how she approaches volunteer leadership and her commitment to making volunteering more inclusive and accessible.

I have worked in volunteering teams at English Heritage since 2019. No two days are the same at English Heritage; I have developed new volunteering programmes to monitor the condition of historic sites & undertake maintenance, empowered fellow volunteer manages to grow their own programmes & helped to deliver a digital volunteer management system. The best part of my role, however, is getting to work alongside our own team of home-based volunteers who make the magic happen behind the scenes! Prior to English Heritage, I worked on a range of funded projects in the heritage sector, with a focus on volunteering & community engagement.

Chris Wade has dedicated over 25 years to charity leadership. His extensive career includes CEO, director, and trustee positions at national, federated, and local charities, giving him broad experience in maximising impact through people.

A respected voice in the sector, Chris has served for over a decade on the boards of Volunteering England and NCVO and chaired the National Network of Volunteer Involving Agencies, where he supported strategic volunteering development across the UK. His company, Time for Impact was founded on a simple belief: the gift of time has the power to create profound change. Their mission is to help organisations revolutionise their volunteering strategy by challenging traditional assumptions and unlocking the latent goodwill in their communities. They provide innovative and strategic thinking to help leaders widen participation and powerfully demonstrate their impact.

Chris is host of the Time for Impact Podcast, where they celebrate and share volunteerism learnings from across the globe.

Lucy is the Citizen Engagement Manager at The Food Foundation, managing the organisation’s volunteering programme – The Food Ambassador programme – and working to amplify the voices of citizens with lived experience of food insecurity in policymaking spaces, research and the media. Previously, Lucy worked in London’s largest food redistribution charity – The Felix Project – managing their city-wide volunteer programme with 1,000s of volunteers. She also set up and developed Felix’s equity, diversity and inclusion work, and feels passionately about advocating for social justice both within and outside the workplace. Lucy is an avid volunteer herself, enjoying various roles in her local community.

Mirabai is a Learning and Development and Volunteer Engagement professional with over 20 years’ experience in the charity and community sector. Driven by creating connection and enabling growth, her career spans roles at Sustrans, NUS, Volunteer Centre Hackney and Girlguiding, as well as a year in China with VSO as an Organisational Development Adviser. She brings strong expertise in nurturing people and organisational capability, and now supports volunteer programme growth and best practice at English Heritage. Mirabai is a Board Member of the Association of Volunteer Managers and an Associate Member of the CIPD, having recently completed L&D Consultant Business Partner qualification.

Amy joined Cats Protection’s Volunteering Team in 2017 where she leads the Volunteering Best Practice team, supporting the Volunteering Best Practice Partners in their role and capturing the impact of the great work the team deliver. Amy and her team work closely with colleagues at all levels across the charity to help shape volunteering plans and ensure volunteer management and support is embedded to deliver the best possible experience for our 10,500 volunteers.

Before working at Cats Protection, Amy held roles for national charities including Diabetes UK and St John Ambulance where she implemented volunteer best practice processes, policies and systems to support the charities volunteers.

Amy has volunteered from a young age and is passionate about both the contribution volunteers can make to organisations and the impact it can have on individuals too.

Gwyneth joined Cats Protection in 2023 to oversee the Volunteering Team and begin implementation of the volunteering strategy. In her role Gwyneth is responsible for the overseeing activity that supports volunteering strategy delivery, through championing the support, involvement and engagement of volunteers within the organisation at all levels.
In her role, Gwyneth works directly with senior leadership to inform strategic volunteering priorities, and leads a team of volunteering subject matter experts, all of whom provide expert advice and guidance in volunteer engagement, volunteering trends and sector best practice.

Amanda Naylor OBE, CEO at Volunteering Matters, has 27 years’ experience in the third sector, international development and statutory social care and criminal justice sector. Her work has focused on supporting and safeguarding child victims, disabled children, looked after children, young people subject to safeguarding procedures and young people in youth justice system. At Volunteering Matters she leads an organization that has over 150 projects across England, Scotland and Wales delivering impactful change in communities through place-based volunteering programmes.

Formerly Amanda was CEO at Manchester Youth Zone based in Harpurhey. A vibrant youth and community provision with world class facilities, working with over 1,000 children and young people aged 8 -25 years and families per week in North Manchester. Prior to this Amanda headed up the national DFE funded COVID-19 response Barnardo’s service ‘See, Hear Respond’ coordinating across over 84 VCSE partner organisations to get immediate support to over 100,000 children who were identified as most in need, and prior to this held the UK child sexual abuse and exploitation portfolio at Barnardo’s who delivered almost 100 CSA services.

Amanda is a Co-Chair at Vision for Volunteering. A collaborative initiative looking at developing a volunteering landscape that meets the needs of volunteers, organisations and communities.

She is also the Co-Chair at Respond (an organisation specialising in psychotherapy for children and adults with learning disabilities who have experienced trauma and abuse), has sat on the Centre for Expertise (CSA), NPCC child sexual exploitation by gangs, and National Contextual Safeguarding advisory boards and NOTA Advisory Board, and NWG policy forum. She also sits on the England National Advisory Board at Action for Children.