Welcome from the Chair
Thank you for your interest in becoming a Trustee of our Charity.
This is an exciting time to join us. Over the past six years, we have made significant strides in modernising our organisation—improving governance and systems, conducting strategic reviews, and expanding our staff team.
We plan to conduct another review of our individual grant programs in early 2025 and we want our new Trustees to play an integral role in this process.
Our governance improvements have included renewing and strengthening the Trustee Board. By the time the last of the four new Trustees is appointed, all current Trustees will have joined since 2018.
Before starting this recruitment process, we reviewed the skills, knowledge, experiences, and diversity of our current Trustees. As a result, we are particularly interested in candidates who bring one or more of the following:
Lived Experience: Personal insights into hardship, need and distress.
Professional Expertise: Significant experience of providing services to or advocating for those in need.
Grant Evaluation Skills: Familiarity with individual grant-giving and assessing the impacts of grant programs.
Additionally, we seek to enhance the financial expertise on our Board. As an endowed charity with a substantial investment portfolio, we aim to recruit at least one Trustee with significant knowledge and experience in charity finance and investments. We are also looking to increase the Board’s diversity, particularly in terms of ethnicity, to better reflect the community we serve.
Below, you’ll find links to essential information to help you in this process:
Background Information: Our history, services, and governance and organisational arrangements.
Organisational Values: The principles that define how we work. We remind ourselves of these values at the start of each Board meeting.
Trustee Role Description: This outlines the general duties and includes a person specification. (Role descriptions for Chair, Vice-Chair, and Treasurer are also included)
Trustee Code of Conduct: All Trustees must agree to honour this Code.
Application Form: If you would like to apply, please complete the form and send it, to our Clerk at the address listed.
We aim to review applications within one working week and to interview applicants that appear to who meet our criteria within three working weeks. Prospective Trustees are usually invited to attend the next scheduled meeting of the Board (which meets in March, June, September and December) before being appointed.
Some Trusteeships need local authority ratification (see the ‘governance and organisational arrangements’ section in the Background Information). This process may take a couple of months, involving some additional paperwork, but those individuals will still be able to participate in Board and Sub-Committee meetings during this time.
We are planning an ‘away day’ in January or February, to review the individual grant programmes and help develop the new leadership team. We encourage all the new Trustees to attend.
If you have any questions or would like more information about the Charity before applying, please reach out to our Clerk.
We look forward to receiving your application!
Warm regards,
Rebekah Bostan
Chair of the Board of Trustees