How To Become A Young Trustee

 

The podcast above gives reasons for why young people should be Trustees and talks a little bit about my own Trustee Journey and why I set up Young Charity Trustees.

It includes 5 tips for young people who want to become trustees:

 

1 Passion matters so much

2 Think outside the box when finding a role

3 Be as open-minded as you can about the role you choose

4 Consider how your skills complement those of the existing board members

5 Think how you can make the biggest difference

 

 

It also features 5 tips for charities who want to bring young trustees onto their Board:

 

1 Have a clear ask on your website, driving traffic back there. It’s the best place to sell yourself

2 Don’t try to get ‘down with the kidz’

3 Consider if there is anything in the general way your Board is set up (meeting times etc) that would discourage young people

4 Provide an offer of induction, training and maybe a buddy system. This would be good for all new Trustees, not just young ones

5 Be  confident in the knowledge that there are a lot of potential young trustees out there- by thinking of them, you have a wider pool of applicants

(I give a fuller explanation of these tips in the podcast itself)

 

At Young Charity Trustees, we are really looking forward to Trustees’ Week 2014, which starts on the 10th of November.

In the run up to the Week we have been promoting the Trustees’ Week Thunderclap, speaking at an event in Canary Wharf to encourage young trustees and speaking about Board Diversity at the Lord Mayor’s Charity Chairs Conference at Mansion House.

Soon we will speaking about young people and the charity sector at an ACOSVO Conference in Edinburgh (while there we hope to meet up with our allies at Young Trustees in Scotland) and in Trustees’ Week itself we will be helping run seminars at two destinations in Wales with the Wales Audit Office.

Please use the hashtag #youngtrustees if you want to talk about these issues during the Week itself or indeed at any time. You can find us on Twitter here, on LinkedIn here and on Facebook here.

Thanks very much to all our Ambassadors who promote our work throughout the year. When our new website is complete we hope to introduce them to you properly. One of our Ambassadors, Leon Ward, recently wrote this great piece about Trusteeship.

It is a great time to try to become a young trustee. More and more charities are thinking about trying to recruit young people for their boards and more and more young people are deciding to take the plunge. Excellent recent research from Getting on Board, chimes with research that was carried out for us last year– both show the great appetite that young people have for Trusteeship and the difference that it makes for their professional development.

There are thousands if not millions of young people out there right now who have no idea that they could be Trustees but would join Boards with the right encouragement and support. That’s thousands of young people who could give their passion, their skills and their knowledge to charities. Don’t we owe it to our beneficiaries to help make this a reality?

If you do decide that you want to become a Trustee, here is an excellent place to start. Or, if you know someone else who you think would make a fantastic Trustee, please join in with Getting on Board’s campaign by using the #nominateatrustee hashtag.

Oh and just to show that we love celebrating older Trustees too, check out this article about a brilliant Trustee Rap on Good News Shared!

Good luck with your Trustee journey and hope you have a fantastic Trustees Week!

 

Speaking about Board Diversity:

 

An interview with me about Young Charity Trustees:

 

A podcast with the Charity Commission about Trusteeship:

 

Prezi- So, you want to be a Trustee?

Prezi- Why should you diversify your charity board?