“Rob Avann was Head of Specialist Volunteering for The Labour Party from September 2023 to August 2024.Rob’s role was to develop bespoke strategy and governance to identify, recruit, on-board and support specialist (skilled) volunteers with discreet professional expertise of specific added value to the Party, meeting complex and often sensitive needs. Rob’s remit was to develop and embed this work, which was a new area of work for the Party at the time that he joined us.Rob built relationships across the Party, including with senior leaders, to establish and embed an approach that would help us to deliver a General Election victory in 2024.He developed and rolled out new governance documentation and process checks for all aspects of specialist volunteering across the Party. He developed our first-ever database of potential specialist volunteers, and populated it with hundreds of skilled and experienced professionals with a wide array of skillsets and backgrounds.Rob’s key deliverable objective was to support our General Election resource planning in two ways – firstly by working with our Regional teams to understand, capture and meet skill needs in target constituencies up and down the country, and secondly by supporting the central resource planning for the campaign by identifying and proposing specialist volunteers who could meet skills gaps and support the campaign in central or national capacities. Leading up to, and during the campaign, he undertook matching of potential specialist volunteers for both local and national needs, both planned and emerging. He developed relationships with potential volunteers, assessed their experience and skills, and also undertook detailed background checks to ensure that they were appropriate for the campaign in a highly agile, dynamic and high profile working environment.During his time with the Party, Rob made excellent working relationships and worked hard to achieve victory in the 2024 General Election. He brought positive energy, integrity, diligence, professionalism, resourcefulness, tenacity and experience of skilled volunteering to this role.”

“Rob undertook a detailed governance review for Facial Palsy UK. He seemed to “get” our charity instinctively. The report pinpointed with exceptional accuracy several areas where we need to focus. A particularly helpful feature of his report was his grouping of its recommendations into high, medium and low priority. We adopted a couple of the low priority recommendations very quickly as they were easy to implement, but the main benefit is linked to some of the more challenging recommendations, and the structure of the report has meant that we should not lose sight of those. My expectations were very high from the outset. The outcome far exceeded them. If I was asked how and why, I think it is the combination of Rob’s soft skills of tact and patience with the precision of his insight, the focus of the recommendations, and the absence of padding. The governance review has been invaluable for our small charity with a national remit. ”