Reach already connects experienced people with charities that need their skills. Build Experience adds a second route for people who have capability but need recent evidence, confidence, a reference or a supported way back into work.
Concept pathway: this is not a live Reach service and does not imply a current DWP, council or employment-provider partnership.
The clearest model is two routes into the same Reach marketplace, with different eligibility and outcomes.
For experienced professionals and trustees who already meet Reach's established skills-based volunteering criteria.
For people who can contribute but need a current opportunity to demonstrate capability and create evidence.
The new pieces only make sense if they connect. This is the full proposed journey from joining Reach to whatever comes next.
Start with skills, interests, availability and the kind of environment that helps the person do good work. Employment history can add context, but it is not the gatekeeper.
Practical preferences become searchable without requiring a diagnosis or medical disclosure.
The organisation defines a clear outcome, realistic hours, named contact and practical support. It is real work for a social-purpose organisation, not manufactured training.
Reach can make expectations explicit before the project starts, while the organisation provides feedback and a realistic communication rhythm.
At the end, both sides confirm participation. The organisation records the outcome, duration and skills demonstrated instead of the placement simply disappearing into history.
The person's profile gains a persistent project record, verified skills, an optional portfolio link and a reference where the organisation provides one.
That next step might simply be another volunteering project. For people who want employment progression, it could also lead to mentoring, an interview, training, a supported placement or paid work when appropriate.
These are the additions that make the workflow work rather than leaving Build Experience as a standalone landing page.
Capability-first profile, working-style preferences, saved searches, verified experience and references.
A project format with clear scope, support expectations, completion confirmation and reference prompts.
Placement outcomes become structured data, enabling better matching, evidence and reporting without manual chasing.
Universities, councils, disability organisations and employment-support providers could refer people into a measurable pathway.
Build Experience is only one part of the successor concept. The wider redesign preserves Reach's familiar brand, skilled-volunteering and trustee strengths, then makes the marketplace, profiles and signed-in journeys easier to discover and use.
The Reach name, purple-led palette, yellow/green/magenta accents, illustration language, volunteer/organisation split, skilled volunteering and trustee recruitment remain the foundation.
Search becomes more prominent, signed-in areas become task-led, organisations are accountable for responses, and people can match on practical working conditions rather than diagnosis.
Build Experience, verified evidence, accessibility support, grassroots verification, membership, partner distribution and lean automation extend Reach without turning it into a generic jobs platform.
Each prototype page starts from something Reach already does, then shows the additional information, accessibility, accountability or workflow the successor could add.
Honours: Reach's skills, causes, location and opportunity search.
Improves: work-style, accessibility, verification and response information before somebody applies.
Honours: Reach's detailed role and organisation information.
Improves: working style, access information, response history, explainable matching and clearer expectations.
Honours: Reach's simple volunteer account route.
Improves: progressive profile building, skills evidence, CV/LinkedIn-assisted setup, privacy and accessibility preferences.
Honours: Reach profiles and placements.
Improves: verified skills, references, profile status, working preferences, privacy controls and stories linked to real experience.
Honours: Reach's organisation records and verification.
Improves: responsiveness, accessibility culture, live opportunities, stories, named adjustment support and public trust signals.
Honours: organisations proactively searching Reach volunteers.
Improves: evidence, availability, profile status and neutral work-style compatibility without exposing medical information.
Honours: Reach's public-benefit mission.
Improves: physical, sensory and communication information, private preferences and a clear Right to Try support pathway.
Honours: Reach's existing signed-in dashboard pattern.
Improves: recruitment workflow, messaging, placements, references, membership, impact reporting and automated housekeeping.
The concept deliberately reuses Reach's visual DNA and familiar user mental models. Inkfire's contribution is primarily product structure, accessibility, automation and interaction design, while Reach remains visibly and culturally Reach.
See the wider Reach + Inkfire conceptReach's Board has said the closure is about long-term financial sustainability, not a lack of demand or impact. This proposal asks a different question: can the core marketplace, trustee expertise, community, stories and learning survive in a leaner operating model rather than disappear with the current organisation?
Keep Reach's brand, skilled-volunteering proposition, trustee recruitment, marketplace logic, guidance, stories and sector relationships wherever transfer, consent and governance allow.
Move the application to a stack Inkfire can maintain directly, automate predictable lifecycle work and run a reduced service where paid staff focus on people, risk and relationships rather than repetitive administration.
Once the core service is stable, add organisation membership, employer programmes, partner distribution, Build Experience and public-benefit funding only where they strengthen the mission and economics.
Under the concept, Reach's trustees and leadership would retain mission, safeguarding, eligibility, partnerships and public-benefit decisions. Inkfire would be paid transparently for application development, hosting, security, accessibility, maintenance and platform operations. The technology partner should never control marketplace ranking, safeguarding decisions or charitable policy.
The figures below are an illustrative board scenario, not a promise. They show the order of magnitude worth testing against Reach's actual invoices, payroll, support volumes and TUPE advice.
Upsun, supporting AWS storage and Loqate in the published handover example.
Illustrative engineering ceiling for core hosting/services, not a supplier quote.
Potential saving: £6,252 / year · about 68%A more optimised infrastructure scenario once real load and service requirements are known.
Potential saving: £7,452 / year · about 81%The handover model describes a service / quality function of roughly 3.5 FTE plus three volunteers. That is not the charity's entire workforce. A reduced-capacity rescue could test whether routine automation lets Reach retain approximately 2.0–2.5 FTE of human service capacity while removing the equivalent of 1.0–1.5 FTE of repetitive administration.
Potential direct reduction from the platform scenarios above plus 1.0–1.5 FTE of routine service workload. This excludes any new membership, employer, partner or grant income.
Before this is used as a board forecast, replace the staffing assumption with Reach's actual payroll, pensions, NI, contractor costs, TUPE advice and measured support volumes. The point of the prototype is to show a credible cost-down mechanism, not to manufacture certainty.
These are live previews of the current prototype. The board can open each journey and see how the proposal preserves Reach's core service while making it easier to operate, more accessible and more useful to volunteers and organisations.
Skills, causes and location remain. The redesign adds response quality, accessibility, working style and clearer verification before a volunteer commits time.
Open the marketplaceHours, work style, accessibility, organisation responsiveness and matching reasons help people decide whether an opportunity genuinely fits.
Open the opportunityVerified experience, skills, references, profile states and privacy-controlled work preferences make the account more useful over time.
Open the volunteer profilePhysical, sensory and communication conditions become visible, while private health information stays private and the human support route remains available.
Open accessible volunteeringThe rescue target is a safe core-platform cutover within roughly 4–6 weeks once the Drupal code, database, files and decision-makers are available. The first release does not need every future feature. It needs the essential Reach marketplace to survive.
The first success criterion is not feature parity. It is preserving a safe, usable marketplace quickly enough to stop unnecessary legacy costs while keeping the human judgement, relationships and community trust that made Reach valuable. Once the core is safe, the successor can improve in public rather than rebuild behind closed doors for a year.
This is the biggest product difference. The value of the project stays attached to the person's Reach profile and can strengthen future volunteering or employment applications.
Open the demo volunteer profileBuild Experience is a charity/community project pathway. Where a commercial employer has a real role, the destination should move toward paid work rather than keeping somebody indefinitely unpaid.
A small environmental charity needs help turning technical reports into six clear public-facing stories. Most work can be completed asynchronously, a mentor checks in weekly, and the organisation verifies the project and provides a reference at the end.
Two hours to one week. Clear scope, flexible pacing and a reviewed outcome.
Explore Micro Experience
