Scope of work for skilled help

A scope of work is a short written description of one piece of work: what will be done, what won't, and how you'll both know it's finished. It's the single most useful page you can write before a volunteer expert or another charity starts helping you. Golden Hint's community guidelines ask both sides of an exchange to agree the scope and timing before work starts, and the credit rules say a fixed-scope task must be priced and agreed before work starts too.

This template uses the same five parts as the scope in the Golden Hint app and in our guide on asking for skilled help, plus a timeline and sign-off. It's for a single piece of work. For an ongoing volunteer role, use our volunteer agreement instead.

How to adapt it

• Keep it to one page. If it won't fit, the work is probably too big: split it into two pieces.
• Write "Done when" as one sentence someone outside your charity could check.
• Fill in "Not included" every time, even with one line. It's what stops the job from quietly growing.
• If anything changes, update the page and both of you agree it again. On the Exchange, agree a new or changed exchange rather than stretching the old one.
• This is a plain agreement about expectations, not a legal contract. For work with legal or financial consequences, your board still makes the decisions.