Lend a hand
This is a small fund. We are not asking anyone to give up a weekend a month, or to attend a training day in central London. We are asking for four small kindnesses a year — and we are asking openly, so that the volunteering team you would meet feels small, particular, and very much like the rest of the place.
Four small roles
Each role is described below with its commitment in hours, its location, the named Lodge officer who leads it, and a brief note of what the volunteer would actually do. There is no application form in the formal sense — only the short enquiry box at the foot of this page.
Role · 01 · year-round
Help the Lodge Almoner answer the ten or twelve letters and emails he receives each year — mostly from former Brethren, widows, and partner charities. The work is to draft a short, plain reply in pencil for the Almoner to copy in pen; nothing is sent without his signature.
Role · 02 · once a year
One Tuesday evening in November, the Lodge Almoner and a handful of helpers gather at the Village Hall to address and write the twelve Widows' Christmas envelopes. We need two or three quiet hands at the writing — legible, patient, kindly worded.
Role · 03 · annual
The annual coffee morning, held in June at Fetcham Village Hall, is our one and only fundraising event of the year. We need three or four pairs of hands to stew the tea, butter the scones, count the float, and stack the chairs at the close. A morning's work, no more.
Role · 04 · occasional
Twice or three times a year, the Lodge Almoner asks if anyone can drive a widow or older Brother to a hospital appointment, a funeral, or — once memorably — a great-grandchild's nativity play. The work is two hours of driving and the quiet companionship that comes with it. A clean licence and a kind disposition are all that is needed.
You do not need to be a Freemason to lend a hand. Three of the four roles above are open to anyone in the four parishes; the Almoner's correspondent role is held by a Brother of Astede Lodge for confidentiality reasons, but the rest are open to neighbours, partners, friends of the fund.
We will ask you to read and sign our short safeguarding statement — a single page, plain English — and to provide one reference (a teacher, employer, vicar, or a previous voluntary post). Drivers should provide a copy of their driving licence; we keep a photocopy with the Trustees' papers for one year and then shred it.
We cannot promise anyone a particular shift, a regular slot, or a guaranteed call to drive. Our work is small and somewhat irregular — there may be a quiet summer with little to do, followed by a busier December. We do not run a volunteer programme in the modern sense; we run a small fund that occasionally needs a hand.
What we can promise is a cup of tea at the kitchen-table meeting, the friendship of the few Brothers who keep this fund alive, and a small place in a story that has been going on quietly in Fetcham since 1963.
Enquire
A member of our volunteering team — usually the Lodge Almoner himself — will write back to you within five working days. We do not keep your details on any list; if we do not hear back from you within six weeks we shred the enquiry.
