Volunteering
Our volunteers play a vital role in helping us to keep the parks beautiful and exciting places to visit.
The Parks Trust has around 250 volunteers who support us in caring for Milton Keynes' parks. Volunteering is a great way to meet people, learn new skills, have fun and keep fit while giving something back to your local community and helping to improve the environment.
Our volunteers help us in so many ways from our Volunteer Rangers and Wardens who carry out patrols and litter picks to supporting our community engagement work with events and outdoor learning volunteering. Many of our volunteers help with our conservation and biodiversity work with practical work parties and wildlife surveying.
Benefits of volunteering include wearing our Parks Trust volunteer uniform, regular catch ups with meetings, training sessions, coffee mornings and volunteer news via the dedicated volunteer app and portal 'Assemble'. We also host a celebratory event in early part of the year to celebrate our volunteers, and a summer evening social to allow all our volunteers to get together and enjoy an evening of nice food and conversation.
All new volunteers complete an induction programme and volunteering activities only commence after attending an initial introduction meeting and then completing any further on-site inductions or training required for their role.
Alongside our volunteering programme, we host community volunteering tasks for members of the public to help their local park.
We also have a few Friends of and affiliated volunteer groups we work with in our parks.
We recruit new volunteers as roles become available which will be displayed in this section when we have live vacancies.
As roles become available, you can get in touch to receive more information and an invitation to the application process. We do our best to match people to the most appropriate roles based on what you are looking to do, your skills, availability and locality.
If successful, you will be invited to an initial induction where you will learn more about the Trust and our volunteering programme. You’ll be issued some uniform to get you started and receive your handbook and complete your volunteer agreement form to register you as a volunteer. Many of our roles with then require a site induction or shadowing opportunity with a lead member of staff to help you get to grips with your new role.
Your lead member of staff will be available to help with your role and our Volunteer Coordinator will organise any training/resources you may require, plus help keep you updated with anything else happening as part of our volunteer programme.
We are delighted that The Parks Trust has been awarded the prestigious Investing in Volunteers (IiV) accreditation, signifying our commitment to volunteer management standards.
Get outdoors, help the environment, keep active and meet new people at our community volunteering tasks across Milton Keynes.
We are proud to have Friends of and affiliated volunteer groups that we work with in our parks. These groups provide vital support to the particular parks they work in and are avid ambassadors for those parks. They run open days, events, guided walks, talks and conservation tasks and we thank them for the support they give The Parks Trust. View groups currently active below and click the links to get involved.
Friends of Linford Lakes Nature Reserve
Friends of Great Linford Manor Park
Stony Riverside Parks Group
Elfield Bushcraft
Mid Shires Orchard Group
MK Green Gym
Milton Keynes Rose Trust
Community Trees: MK
We no longer host corporate volunteering tasks at The Parks Trust. However there are lots of other ways you can support us and help the Milton Keynes community and our local environment.