Income-strategy trustee Home-Start Wok. - Volunteer in Wokingham

Do you want to improve the lives of parents and young children in Wokingham by focusing our charity on better income generation? You could be a trustee for Home-Start Wokingham District, a local charity that gives every child the best possible start in life.

What you get as a volunteer trustee with our organisation:

• An opportunity to exercise your strategic income generation ideas and skills, probably in a different environment or context.
• A chance to expand and implement your understanding of our work.
• An opportunity to influence and collectively lead an organisation supporting local parents.
• A chance to augment your experience of charities.
• A boost to your career and CV, if needed.
• Satisfaction of helping an organisation that supports parents and children, thus giving something back to your community.

What we get:

• Your strategic skills, knowledge, understanding or experience.
• Your abilities to influence plans for our charity’s future, especially our income and funding strategy.
• 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 our beneficiaries get:

• The ability to continue our support for parents with young children.
• A forward‑looking and agile organisation, with a well‑informed and well‑managed Board of trustees.

We’re looking for:

• Understanding of the needs of the parents and families that rely on our support, as well as an empathy with their individual situations.
• Experience as a parent is obviously useful, but not required.
• Clear commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion, valuing differences to make better decisions and deliver better services for our families.
• Ability to lead and develop our Income Generation & Fundraising Strategy.
• An understanding of funding and fundraising opportunities, ideally in a charity, not-for-profit or SME; experience in these areas would be welcomed but not essential.
• Ability to oversee income generation and funding opportunities, in association with other Trustees, our Operations Manager and Fundraiser.
• Strategic vision; good, independent judgement; ability to think creatively, tempered by pragmatism and reality.
• Ability to cooperatively work with the team of Trustees, bringing impartiality and objectivity to decision‑making.
• Secure personal access to digital communication and ability to competently use those resources.
• Commitment to the organisation; willingness and ability to devote the necessary time and effort, including being fully prepared for Trustees’ and associated meetings.
• While experience and understanding of charity law and governance can be useful, we strongly welcome people without prior charity Trustee experience in order to increase the diversity of our Board; training in those areas is provided.

What will you be doing:

Set up in 1996, we offer a free family support service to families with at least one child under the age of five, provided by volunteers who are parents themselves, to support other parents. That home visiting service is unique in Wokingham Borough, providing compassionate, confidential and non‑judgmental help and friendship to local parents struggling to cope with the daily challenges of family life. We are affiliated to national Home-Start UK, but we are an independent local charity responsible for our own governance and securing our own funding. Our income in 2023/24 was over £100k, and we want to maintain at least that level in order to provide our services.

Trustees are the people who make the top‑level decisions for our charity. Our Board includes people with experience and skills in supporting parents, and we’d expect new trustees to have empathy with our cause and our beneficiaries, but you don't have to be a parent. We’re looking for strategic focus on our income generation, for a trustee to guide and drive our plans to continue, and increase, our funding streams. You’ll offer support to our Fundraiser and Operations Manager, working with other trustees to develop and track all our income. You don’t necessarily need prior experience of charity trusteeship, as support from local charity-support organisations is always available. 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 are looking for people from a variety of backgrounds to join our charity. 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, contact and liaison with other trustees and employees is expected. We ask for about ten hours per month on average, which includes all meetings, discussions, etc. You will need access to digital communications, as much of our charity’s business is run that way.