is anyone a trustee of a charity?

[hatwoman]

not exactly employment but I didn;t know where else to put it. I'm interested in doing this and just wondered what anyone's experience was like...also, in an application, what "soft" skills would you highlight? and how? especially if they've not really given any specific ideas as to what they're after...

I'm not a trustee but am a co-opted member of the Audit and Risk Committee of a charity.

I don't know if my experience is of any use to you since it's a voluntary role and I was approached to do it by one of the existing members to fill one of their perceived skills gaps.

happy to talk to you about it though if it would help.

depends on the charity and what sort of role they woudl want you to do - I was a Trustee of a small charity for many years, and all of our Trustees were hands-on in actually running the charity, so we needed people with conference management skills, writing skills, website design/maintenance, and so on.
A larger charity would have it's Trustees in more of a governance role, so less emphasis on the practical stuff.

thanks both. it's a generic trustee role for a small charity that does research roughly in my line of work - but it's an overlap rather than a perfect match, if that makes sense. but i think that's good - because I bring a certain substantive expertise/knowledge of relevance. but beyond attending 6 (iirc) meetings a year and advising on overall strategic planning they've not said much more about the role...so it's quite hard to know what to say beyond the substantive knowledge; experience of planning; and giving examples of being on committees (which starts to get a bit wishy washy)

I work for a charity. When we are looking for new trustees we are looking for both specific skills that fill gaps that have been identified (eg accountancy, legal, pr, fundraising etc) and other more general skills such as experience volunteering, experience in the area that the charity specialises in (eg children, healthcare, housing etc), experience as a trustee or of being on a committee (to show how you would work with other people).

I think then that one of the key soft skills is that of being a non-executive and knowing how to challenge/support the management without getting in their way or trying to do their job for them. I have heard this described in the context of school governors as the requirement to be a "critical friend". I've also had a chief exec tell me that his mantra for non exec is "noses in, fingers out" which I quite like as a description of the role.

I think your committee experience is probably very helpful here. You might want to consider who your referees would be as well and get some from management and fellow committee members.

thanks again - all very useful. at least I was thinking along the right lines. many years ago - abt 15 I think - I was on the management committee of a v. small charity. ie I, and about 5 or 6 others ran it (it had no paid staff). I only did it for a year. worth mentioning? or just too long ago?

I would mention it, along with any other experience you think would be useful (including from paid employment). They may also need reassurance from you that you can spare the time needed - in many cases this is alot more than the published x number of days a year.

It would also be worthwhile looking at the charity commission website - they have several publications on being a trustee, although the charity won't expect you to know all of the technical stuff.

I have been a trustee of a few charities. I would agree with the other posts here, and add that there are some generic skills that are always useful, like: ability to read and understand financial information, understanding of how activities can be monitored and evaluated, any experience/understanding of what is involved in managing and support chief executives, understanding of the funding environment, focus on the bottom line and outputs without getting distracted by the detail in the middle.

thanks pollyanna - I looked at the charity commission stuff. all my paid employment is relevant (and, in fact, I used to work with the director of this charity). also I'm now self-employed as a consultant, so juggling the time is, in theory, easier.