Parity for Disability: Trustee fundraise - Volunteer in Farnborough

Do you want to help govern a charity that is a vital lifeline for people with multiple disabilities? You could be a trustee for Parity for Disability, a Farnborough-based charity that provides services and support for people with multiple disabilities.

What do YOU get as a volunteer trustee with our organisation?

• An opportunity to exercise your strategic fundraising, marketing and engagement skills, probably in a different environment or context.
• An opportunity to influence and collectively lead an organisation supporting people with multiple disabilities.
• A chance to expand and implement your understanding of our work with our students.
• A chance to augment your experience of charities.
• A boost to your career and CV, if needed.
• Satisfaction of helping an organisation that supports people with disabilities, thus giving something back to your community.

What do we get?

• Your strategic skills, knowledge, understanding and experience.
• Your abilities to influence plans for our charity’s future.
• Enhancement to our overall governance and the Board of trustees; improvement in our charity governance and operational growth.
• Your participation in our collective decision-making, contributing to all areas of our charity work.
• Your enthusiasm.

What do our beneficiaries get?

• The ability to continue our support for people with multiple disabilities.
• A forward-looking and agile organisation, with a well-informed and well-managed Board of trustees.

What are we looking for?

• Clear commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion, valuing differences to make better decisions and deliver better outcomes.
• Understanding of the needs of our beneficiaries is desirable; a strong empathy with them and their needs is essential.
• Strategic vision; good, independent judgement; ability to think creatively, tempered by pragmatism and reality.
• Being capable of a ‘birds-eye’ strategic view of fundraising is essential.
• Previous recent experience in a senior role in marketing/engagement/fundraising, ideally in a charity or not-for-profit environment, is welcome.
• Having sales, marketing or similar qualifications would be welcome, but are not essential.
• A clear understanding of diverse income streams/engagement platforms.
• Ability to work with our senior management and our fundraising team to update our fundraising and engagement strategy; able to collaborate, inspire and motivate others.
• Able to contribute to the development of a strong overall business strategy with long-term goals and planned steps for pursuing our charitable purpose and achieving our vision.
• Skills to analyse proposals, examine their strategic fundraising consequences and make concise recommendations as part of the trustees’ team.
• Ability to cooperatively work with the team of trustees, bringing impartiality and objectivity to decision-making.
• Skills and ability to listen, even to dissenting views.
• Willingness to speak your mind and to challenge other trustees and employees with good intent; able to make unpopular recommendations to the Board, if necessary.
• Secure personal access to digital communication and able to competently use those resources.
• Commitment to the organisation; willingness and ability to devote the necessary time & effort.
• Experience of committee work, with an understanding of effective (charity or corporate) governance, would be welcome but is not a prerequisite.
• Having appropriate personal and professional contacts & networks, with willingness to draw on those as needed.

What will you be doing?

Parity for Disability Trustee to take Board lead in supporting Fundraising, Marketing & Stakeholder Engagement. Can you help support and govern our fundraising team that is focused on our future, with your “bird’s-eye” view?

From starting out as a branch of a national charity in 1953, to our first independent Day Services in the 1990s, right through to signing the lease on additional new premises in 2026, we have been there for young people with multiple disabilities when they leave full-time education. Parity for Disability is now a Charitable Company with around £2m in annual turnover, and fundraising is essential to achieving our mission. Our future involves raising awareness, shaping key decisions, and delivering services grounded in the latest understanding and best practice.

The role

Trustees are the people who make the top-level decisions for our charity. Our Board includes people with family members with multiple disabilities, and we’d expect new trustees to have strong empathy with our cause and our students. Parity’s mission is “excellence in services and support for children and adults with multiple disabilities, their families and their carers”. Our aim is to ensure that the needs of as many students and their families as possible are recognised and met. The need for our services is increasing, as evidenced by the current waiting list and we are already taking steps in the next phase of addressing those needs. Our future involves raising awareness, influencing decision-makers and securing additional premises from which we can deliver our services. Obviously, raising funds to support this strategy will be particularly challenging given the current (and forecast) economic conditions.

To better support both the evolution and success of our fundraising team and our strategic objectives, our Board is thus looking for a new trustee with recent and relevant experience of fundraising, marketing, stakeholder engagement or similar attributes. You don’t necessarily need prior experience of charity trusteeship, as full induction to our organisation will be provided, plus specialist support as a new trustee including access to external training. If you can think strategically and plan long-term, you have the primary skills needed by our trustees; you’ll also need to be able to work collectively with other Board members. We are a charity not a business, but we apply business principles to governing our organisation. We want to expand the diversity of our board, in all meanings of the word, and strongly welcome applications from people from less-represented groups.

The focus of a trustee role is strategic, and trustees will not be expected to get involved in the organisation’s operations on a day-to-day basis; however, regular contact and liaison with other trustees and employees, especially our fundraising team, is expected. We ask for about eight hours per month, which includes all meetings, discussions, etc. You will need access to digital communications, as much of our charity’s business is run that way.