Working as Branches Director

Hello all, my name is Chloe and I worked as the Branches Director of Sexpression:UK during the 2024/25 academic year. Whilst occupying this role, I have also been on placement, working full-time as a teacher in a specialist school for autistic students. Safe to say, balancing these roles, as well as maintaining some semblance of a personal life, has not been the easiest feat in the world. Luckily, I have had the amazing support and understanding of the other National committee members along the way.

My role as Branches Director largely consists of maintaining constant, consistent communication with all of our wonderful branches. I do this through weekly emails with information from National, and messaging the Branch Coordinators via whatsapp. I like to think that I have supported the branches when they have needed it, including providing ideas for socials, helping them to get back into their emails when they’re randomly logged out, and reminding them that absolutely anything and anything they put into the charity, alongside balancing their degrees and their own personal lives, is absolutely amazing and we are so grateful for them.

When I started the role in July, I was able to put a lot of time into it (the joys of uni summers). I reached out to around 30 universities about our charity and by the end of the summer I had established three new branches: Brighton and Sussex Medical School, York St John, and Glasgow. I must say I am rather proud of this achievement, as it’s wonderful to see our charity expand and grow. Once I started my placement, I dramatically reduced my workload with Sexpression, which was absolutely a-okay. Since then, I have focused on checking in with branches on a regular basis and sending out weekly emails with updates. Following my check-ins, I often have a multitude of various action points for the coming weeks to help the branches who required it. This work laregly involves putting them in contact with the appropriate member of National Committee, and I even had to attempt to write a constitution for one branch (granted, this did not go well and our amazing National Director did have to step in for me). I am also responsible for supporting the organisation and planning of National Conference and General Assembly. Thankfully, I’ve had a lot of support in these areas as the National Committee team are all aware that a full-time job is quite a hefty ordeal.

To conclude this short blog about working as Branches Director, I have the following to say:

1. Any time you can put into the role (and any within any volunteer position, in my opinion) is absolutely incredible. I’ve always done as much as I can; sometimes that’s been 5-10 hours a week, sometimes 30mins-1 hour. And some weeks, truth be told, I’ve done absolutely nothing (though in these times I’d recommend going out of office for a bit, which I’ve also done).

2. You are very supported in this, and every, role in National Committee. As long as you are open and honest about your situation and how much you can do, everyone is aware that the amount you can dedicate to the role can fluctuate throughout the post.

3. As Branches Director, your main responsibility is making sure all branches understand how truly valued and appreciated they are within our charity. This may be through doing branch shout-outs, or by directly saying this to the Branches Coordinators themselves. All volunteer roles within this charity can be difficult to manage, and we need to recognise this, and lift each other up.