Alan Murray's entire working life has been devoted to the conservation/environmental sector with both local authorities and voluntary organisations. He started out as a full-time volunteer with the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers in 1989. He is now Head of Volunteering Development at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), which has over 14,000 regular volunteers giving a ‘gift of time’ of over 770,000 hours a year. On the journey between the two he has also worked as:
- Community Opportunities Co-ordinator for the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers in Sheffield
- Country Park Ranger for Kirklees Council in West Yorkshire
- Head Ranger for Derbyshire Countryside Service
Murray has worked for over 12 years with RSPB, and his role is to develop, encourage and maximise the impact of volunteering in the organization. He has developed the RSPB’s volunteering strategy and volunteer policy and also developed a training programme for managers of volunteers. He believes that without volunteers the RSPB would be unable to prosper and that the act of volunteering brings benefits to both the volunteers themselves and to those with whom they work.
Murray sits on the England Volunteering Development Council, is a member of the Volunteer Management and Leadership Advisory Group of Volunteering England and is a Director of the Association of Volunteer Managers.
www.rspb.org.uk
www.rspb.org.uk/volunteering
