Reach Volunteering will close later this year after a “structural shift in funding” caused the organisation to become financially unviable.
The 45-year-old charity, which connected charities with volunteers via its online platform, claimed to be the UK’s “single biggest source of trustees for the voluntary sector”.
The organisation announced today it was embarking on a 12-week managed closure plan, with operations expecting to fully cease by 30 November.
Reach Volunteering has 11 staff, all of whom are expected to be made redundant.
The charity, which has helped recruit more than 34,000 volunteers and trustees for the sector, said the closure was due to a “shifting funding landscape”, which had made sustaining its work “increasingly difficult”.
Janet Thorne, chief executive of Reach Volunteering, said in a LinkedIn post: “Over the last few years, there has been a structural shift in funding. Trusts and foundations have narrowed their criteria to specific issues, places and communities, and our breadth – which is a strength in delivery – has become a liability for funding.
“We no longer fit their programmes, and we have come to the end of the road.”
Reach Volunteering said it had “rigorously explored all available funding options” but had been unable to find a sustainable solution.
The charity said it had considered a range of alternative solutions, including growing its earned income and using AI tools to accelerate these endeavours; redesigning the service; making other cost savings; charging for all services; and transferring the platform to another charity.
It had also actively considered mergers over the past few years but was “unable to identify organisations where there is a good alignment in terms of strategic aims, mission, audience, culture and values”, it said.
But the charity remains “open to conversations” with organisations that might be interested in merging or taking some or all of the platform, it added.
To remain sustainable, Reach Volunteering would need to secure a funding package that would sustain it for a minimum of two years, which would enable it to build earned income and optimise its service model.
“In practice, this would require in the region of £200,000 each year and this funding would need to be in place by 10 September to enable us to halt the closure process,” the charity said in its FAQs.
The organisation has announced a 12-week closure plan that it said will ensure an “organised winddown” of the service, before the site is put into read-only mode on 24 November.
In her LinkedIn post, Thorne said she was “heartbroken” to share the news of the charity’s closure, saying: “Our service is thriving, but the funding simply isn’t there.
“We’re gutted because our service is flying and we had more innovations in the pipeline,” she added.
In 2025, Reach Volunteering placed a “record” number of 5,996 volunteers and trustees, registered more than 16,000 new volunteers and engaged 2,440 organisations – 96 per cent of which had annual incomes of less than £1m.
Thorne said: “It’s not easy to build an effective two-sided volunteering service like this, and we’ve seen over a dozen new platforms come and go. Dismantling all of this feels like an act of vandalism.
“However, the simple truth is that the financial model on which we built our operations is no longer viable.”
Reach Volunteering said it was concerned about what its closure meant for the sector, adding that it was the largest single source of trustees for charities, having generated a diverse pool of applicants.
“Even more crucially, we help small, grassroots and volunteer-led groups to reach beyond their networks to recruit people who can complement their existing strengths and help them do more,” the charity said.
“We hope Reach’s closure will prompt a serious and constructive conversation among funders, policymakers and sector leaders about how the infrastructure underpinning these connections will be sustained.”