Oonagh Aitken announces retirement as Chief Executive of Volunteering Matters

Our Chief Executive Oonagh Aitken has announced that she will be leaving Volunteering Matters at the end of June. She will be retiring after seven years with the charity, five of them as Chief Executive. In that time she has led the charity’s transformation from Community Service Volunteers (CSV) to Volunteering Matters, overseeing a renewed focus on its core purpose of volunteering and social action, and ensuring the charity’s ongoing sustainability. The charity now engages nearly 20,000 volunteers every year in over 100 programmes, reaching 85,000 beneficiaries.

Oonagh began her career in teaching before working in the Education Directorate of Strathclyde Regional Council, followed by senior posts in Glasgow City Council and Fife Council. Away from Volunteering Matters she is also President of the international network Volonteurope and on the board of Solidar, the European Civic Forum and Civil Society Europe.

She said: “It has been a great pleasure and a privilege to serve as Chief Executive for such an extraordinary organisation which I sincerely hope will go from strength to strength. I would wholeheartedly encourage people to apply for this leadership role”                                                            

Volunteering Matters’ chair, Anne Heal said: “We’d like to thank Oonagh for seven years of dedication to the charity, steering us with great leadership to where we are now. In that time she has refined our strategic direction, updated our identity to better reflect what we do and ensured we are recognised as one of the UK’s leading volunteering charities. Oonagh will be very hard to replace, but we will do our very best to find a brilliant successor to take Volunteering Matters forward.”

A recruitment process for Volunteering Matters’ Chief Executive is now underway, with full details available from the recruitment agency Green Park.

GREEN PARK RECRUITMENT