Meet our Community Engagement and Supporter Care Manager

My name is Rachel, I am the new Community Engagement and Supporter Care Manager at Behind Closed Doors. I joined the team in January and have loved getting to know our fantastic supporters!

So, what does a Community Engagement and Supporter Care Manager do exactly?  I am lucky enough to spend a lot of my time meeting with & speaking to our amazing community!  I could be planning and helping with events, supporting fundraisers on their journey with tips and suggestions to help them hit their goals, going out into the community & local businesses giving awareness talks, catching up after challenges or events and hearing all about the amazing work and efforts made in aid of Behind Closed Doors and of course, my favourite part – congratulating and thanking all our supporters whether they have completed a challenge, put on an event, gifted through our Amazon Wish List or donated directly. Any form of support makes such a difference and we are so grateful to anyone who supports us.

As an avid crafter myself,  last month Behind Closed Doors ran its first crafty challenge. ‘Stitch a Day in May’ was a big success, the participants crafted every day throughout May and got sponsored for their dedication. It was great to see all the pieces people created and all the progress made by the beginners learning a new craft.  We are now building a crafty community on our Facebook group, we would love for you to join us! Join Our Crafty Community

We have seen several supporters take on a challenge event, including a skydive, marathon and coming up in July, our very own team at Behind Closed Doors are taking on the Tough Mudder 5K – you can still support the team by clicking Here

Behind Closed Doors attended the Leeds International Tattoo Expo on the 10th & 11th June. It was such a fantastic weekend and so wonderful to meet and speak to so many people. We ran a Raffle over the weekend with some amazing prizes including prints donated by some amazing artists and a tattoo! We were lucky enough to have new prizes donated by some of our wonderful supporters over the weekend including free tickets to a live show! A massive thank you to the organizers and everyone who stopped by! The generosity and support we were shown really was overwhelming, We can’t wait for next year!

We have some really exciting events in the diary. In July we have been invited to attend the Leeds Cabaret & Burlesque Festival, this is such an exciting space to expand our community, raise awareness and we will have some fun activities for everyone to get involved in and support Behind Closed Doors. Leeds Cabaret & Burlesque Festival  – July 21^st/22nd

This last 6 months have been a very positive and exciting time and thank you again to all our regular donors and supporters – however you have been involved, we really appreciate you and you are vital in ensuring anyone affected by domestic abuse has a place to turn to for support.

If you are thinking “How can I get involved?”, then there are so many ways you can join our community of supporters and here are a few suggestions –

• Become a regular donor – donating a small amount a month makes an enormous difference. Your kindness directly reaches more people in the local community who need. Become a regular Donor
• Thinking about fundraising? Whether it be running a marathon, doing a skydive, running a bake sale, giving up something you love for a month, crafting out of kindness etc you can set up a JustGiving page to gather sponsors, we can provide you with QR codes and links to help make cashless donations and payments,
• Facebook Birthday Fundraisers –simply choose Behind closed doors as your chosen charity and ask your friends and family to donate as a gift Follow us on Facebook
• Gift from our Amazon Wishlist, we have several items on our Amazon Wishlist ranging from Panic alarms for our staff and service users & home security cameras to items like noise-canceling headphones and a watercooler for our team’s wellbeing while doing such amazing work. Visit Our Amazon Wish List
• Donate whilst you shop! Easy fundraising or Give as you live
• Ask your workplace to support us – we have been chosen as the charity of the year/quarter by some wonderfully generous companies this year, if your company has a charity fund or raises money for worthy causes suggest behind closed doors as a local charity supporting very vulnerable people in the community.
• Share your fundraising stories with us on Social media using #BCDFundraising

Do feel free to get in touch with any questions, or to discuss fundraising– or simply to say “hi”. I will respond personally to every enquiry whether you know exactly what you want to do or want to get involved but are not sure how, I will help you get started and support you on your fundraising journey.

I can’t wait to get to speak to all of you sometime soon and hope to see some of you at our upcoming events!