Treasurer for local charity for people in hardship

Help shape the future of one of South Buckinghamshire’s most trusted community charities. One Can Trust has grown from a cupboard of food in 2011 into a lifeline for thousands of people across High Wycombe and the surrounding area. Today, we support over 400 clients every week and run a growing range of community-based services for people experiencing hardship. As we enter our 2026–2029 strategic period, we are seeking a new Treasurer to join our Board of Trustees.

What You’ll Gain

• A purposeful leadership role in a respected local charity
• The chance to shape services that directly improve people’s lives
• A collaborative Board with a strong culture of trust and shared values
• Helping ensure people in our community get the right support

Role Description

The Treasurer is a trustee with lead responsibility for supporting the Board to ensure the charity’s financial health, integrity, and long‑term sustainability. Working collectively with all trustees, the Treasurer provides additional scrutiny and guidance on financial strategy, risk, controls, and reporting.

Key Responsibilities

• Financial oversight: Ensure the Board receives clear, timely, and accurate financial information, including management accounts, cashflow forecasts, and budget updates. Manage the charity’s cash balances including longer term investments where appropriate. Support trustees to understand the charity’s financial position and key risks and ensure financial information is accessible to trustees without a finance background.
• Strategic financial leadership: Advise on financial implications of the charity’s strategy, major decisions, and long‑term plans.
• Compliance and reporting: Preparation of the annual report and accounts in accordance with the Charities SORP. Ensure statutory returns, filings, and audit/independent examination requirements are met, working closely with the Company Secretary and external examiners.
• Internal controls and risk: Support the Board to set and maintain financial controls, delegated authorities, and risk management processes, drawing on Charity Commission guidance, and ensuring controls remain proportionate to the size and complexity of the charity.
• Insurance: Support the Financial Administrator in identifying and sourcing appropriate insurance policies for the charity at reasonable rates.
• Budgeting and performance: Work with the CEO to develop the annual budget and monitor performance against it, highlighting variances and monitoring corrective action. Prepare bi‑monthly reports to the Board on the charity’s performance.
• Governance and assurance: Contribute to strong financial governance, including being a key member of and chairing the Finance and Risk Committee.
• External relationships: Where appropriate, act as a point of contact for banks, auditors, independent examiners, and key financial stakeholders. Oversee external accounting and audit relationships, including assessing supplier effectiveness, supporting future provider selection where appropriate, and ensuring strong ongoing relationship management.
• CIC Subsidiary: One Can Trust has a CIC subsidiary (Open House Micklefield, which runs the community café ‘Hills Café’) and a key focus of the Treasurer role will be improving consistency, efficiency and alignment of financial practices across both the charity and its subsidiary, helping ensure high‑quality, proportionate and effective financial support across the wider organisation.

Time Commitment

The Treasurer is expected to:

• Attend six Board meetings per annum (4 hours bimonthly)
• Chair the Finance and Risk Committee meetings (currently 2 hours per month, including preparation, meeting, minutes)
• Manage the charity’s insurances (1 day p.a.)
• Support with budget setting (1 day p.a.)
• Produce relevant section for annual report (1 day p.a.)
• Approve payroll (0.5 hours per month)
• Provide advice to the Chair of Trustees and the CEO between meetings (0.5 – 1 hour per week)
• Supervise the day‑to‑day financial operations by providing support to the Financial Administrator (1‑2 hours per week)

In total, a time commitment of approximately 25 days p.a. should be allowed for. This may fluctuate during peak periods such as year‑end and budget setting.

Strategic Aims

The role requires recent and relevant financial experience, good judgement, and the ability to communicate financial matters clearly to non‑specialists. A key part of the Treasurer role will be supporting and developing the charity’s internal financial capability. We need someone who is patient, approachable and willing to coach and mentor the team as they continue to grow in confidence and experience. More broadly, financial acumen across managers is still developing as the charity has grown rapidly in recent years. This is therefore not a purely governance‑focused Treasurer role. We need someone willing to take a practical and engaged approach, provide guidance where needed, help strengthen financial processes and controls, and support non‑financial managers in building greater commercial and financial understanding. We need someone who can combine strong financial oversight with emotional intelligence, pragmatism and a collaborative, supportive approach.