Frequently Asked Questions

We’re a free online platform that supports teachers and career leads.  We connect this community with our community of volunteer business professionals to make it easier for students to gain insight into what is needed to succeed in the workplace. 

We’re run by a charity (Founders4Schools), so we can offer our services for free!

We support our community through:

• Unlimited (live)  on-demand career guidance with our volunteers
• Live Virtual Assemblies Focused on Essential Workplace Skills
• A Resource Centre with on-demand articles, blogs and videos to help you teach at your student’s pace!

All of our services are FREE (for state schools)

We believe that everyone should have free and fair access to meaningful career guidance, and that’s exactly what our community of volunteers provides for teachers and career leads.

Yes! We’re are a charity and believe that everyone should have access to high-quality, meaningful employer encounters for free. 

We’re able to provide our services for free thanks to the generosity of our partners and volunteers who give their time to support our community. No catch, no selling, just friendly people who want to help.

• Personalised – You connect students in your classes with volunteers working in a variety of roles who help you to meet the specific needs of your students. They will talk about their career pathway and can offer practical advice and insights directly relevant to your students’ learning journeys.
• Specialised – Unlike many programmes that offer careers advice for students, F4S connects you to thousands of volunteer experts from more than 50 different workplace  roles. Whether it’s marketing, cyber security or interview skills, students access personalised guidance from volunteers who truly understand the subject matter. This ensures your students get the most relevant, impactful advice, leaving the sessions you arrange for them with the support they need to thrive.
• Flexible – Our system is built so that you can book volunteers to speak to your students at times that suit you.
• Open to all – We believe every young person and educator deserves access to support, so our doors are always open to everyone, regardless of school type or location.
• Friendly – F4S is a supportive community dedicated to providing friendly advice that helps get your students on track for success.
• Scalable – Our platform is specially built so that we can deliver personalised services to 1000s of educators around the world. Innovative technology and automation allow us to efficiently connect students and employers without wasting time & money. ‍

We cover nearly every business topic and role students might pursue later in life.

Students can learn about all roles in every career path and discover where the subjects in the curriculum they love may lead them.

Additionally, F4S helps our educator community demonstrate crucial soft skills such as leadership, communication, and teamwork.

Our community of 30,000 volunteers occupy roles in every sector and have chosen to volunteer their time to help young people and their teachers and parents think about career paths. They work for large organisations like Google, BT and NatWest Group and smaller scale-up organisations like OakNorth, Zoopla, Monzo and as freelancers.

You can browse recommended volunteers and select those you’d love your students to meet. We’ll do our best to connect you with them. If they can’t make it this time, we’ll find you another volunteer with similar skills who can help.

No! With F4S you get unlimited access to volunteer encounters and virtual assemblies for free – no strings attached.

We know it sounds too good to be true, but we promise it’s not!

Yes! We’ve helped the educators of over 700,000 students connect with expert volunteers, empowering them with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed. We’ve won a lot of awards and accolades for doing so as well!

We believe high-quality encounters with business community should be available to all and shouldn’t need to cost the earth (or anything for that matter!)

We ensure the encounters with our volunteer community remain high quality through regular quality control checks, ongoing volunteer & support, and feedback.

Once a career lead or teacher joins our educator community, they can request volunteers to speak to your students immediately!

We have a buffer of 48 hours for booking all sessions with our volunteers to allow them enough time to prepare for the session 😊

Our Workshops are for educators like you! 

They are live and designed to increase your familiarity with our services by sharing best practice from your peers.

The sessions are interactive, so come along with questions and network with fellow career leads and teachers.

Our Virtual Assemblies are live and designed to bring essential, real-world role models straight to your students to raise their aspirations and attainment. 

Based on feedback from our educator community and insights into what today’s employers are looking for in future talent, we’ve curated monthly themes that address the skills and knowledge most in demand by employers.

The sessions are interactive, so come along with questions and network with fellow career leads and teachers.

The Gatsby Benchmarks are the gold standard for career education, and with their recent updates, there’s even more emphasis on meaningful, varied, and inclusive interactions between students and employers. At F4S, we’ve dedicated years to designing services that help schools like yours achieve these goals in collaboration with the Careers & Enterprise Company and thousands of employers.

Here’s how we can support you:

🎯 Engaging Employer Encounters

We provide your students with access to inspiring volunteers who have roles in sustainability, AI, cybersecurity, creative arts, and more. The conversations your students have with these volunteers broadens their horizons, fosters career aspirations and improves optimism about their futures.

🌍 Wide-Ranging Opportunities

Whether your students dream of becoming tech innovators or creative leaders, F4S helps you bring those opportunities to life by arranging role model sessions that are diverse, interactive, and impactful.

📅 Simple, Hassle-Free Scheduling

Our platform makes it easy to book trained speakers who are ready to engage and inspire your students. Everything is tailored to meet your curriculum needs while aligning seamlessly with Gatsby Benchmark 5.

You can get started right away – simply click the button below to begin!

Our mission is to provide students with the skills they need in the workplace– free of charge.

Volunteers join our community to share their knowledge and career journey so that students understand the world of work they will enter once they have completed their formal education.

This pro bono support is delivered through our educator community placing requests on our platform, F4S Virtual Assemblies and workshops.

When you join our community, you’ll support students and educators worldwide or in your chosen region. 

You’ll meet students for one-off in-classroom sessions to positively impact a vast variety of students and have the chance to hone your communication skills through diverse questions the students and their teachers will ask you!

We know everyone is busy and that it’s important to be able to build your volunteering into your everyday lives. So that’s why F4S is totally flexible around you and your schedule.
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When you sign up, you can say how many hours a week you may be able to volunteer and on what days and times you are able to offer sessions. You can change these anytime in your Volunteer Dashboard.

Based on these preferences, we’ll send you requests from our educator community that fit your preferences when we receive them. Each session is no longer than 60 minutes, and you can choose what sessions you want to fit in your diary – commit to just one request at a time. 😊

Our volunteers work with our community on a pro bono basis, so there’s no payment for being one of our volunteers.

When you become one of our volunteers, you agree to not sell your services to our community in line with our Community Values.‍

If you love our mission and have the passion and expert skills to support our community, then we’d love to have you!

We offer volunteering in 50+ business / skill roles

If you have any of these skills and over 3+ years working in a relevant industry, we’d love you to join us!

Yes! We welcome experts from all around the world who want to help us support educators and students.

You can get started right away—simply click the button below to begin!