Trustee Board Member for Women\'s Charity - Volunteer in Liverpool

We’re seeking Trustees to join us as we take an exciting step towards becoming a charity. Our Trustees will help our transition and strengthen governance and sustainability as we provide compassionate support to women affected by trauma, substance use, sex work, and exploitation.

This role will help shape the next chapter of Pearls Project. Trustees will play a key role in developing our strategy for growth, embedding strong governance, and ensuring we stay rooted in our values of compassion, connection, and hope. You will help create a reflective and learning culture within the Board, one that encourages curiosity, feedback, and shared insight. This culture will influence the way our teams and volunteers work together and strengthen our work with women, ensuring that compassion and curiosity run through every part of the organisation.

By contributing your time, experience, and ideas, you will help establish the conditions for Pearls to grow with integrity and confidence, building a charity that does good work and does it in ways that embody compassion, collaboration, and respect at every level.

• Contribute actively to the Board’s work, helping to shape the charity’s strategy and development in line with our values and objectives.
• Ensure the charity operates within its legal, financial, and regulatory responsibilities.
• Provide oversight and constructive challenge to ensure Pearls remains effective, ethical, and sustainable.
• Promote good governance and values‑led, trauma‑informed decision‑making.
• Support and advise the founding director and staff team with insight, encouragement, and healthy challenge.
• Champion equality, inclusion, and safety across all areas of our work.
• Act as ambassador for Pearls, championing us through raising awareness of the charity, advocating for us and supporting opportunities for collaboration, partnerships and fundraising.
• Participate fully in Board meetings and subgroups, preparing in advance by reviewing papers and contributing to discussion.

We are looking for Trustees who believe in what we are doing now and are committed to helping Pearls grow into what we recognise through our work is needed in the future. We are seeking people who share our values and approach to leadership.

• Lead with compassion, showing care, empathy, and respect in their decision‑making and governance.
• Communicate openly and with reflection and curiosity, creating space for different ideas, perspectives, and ways of working.
• Work collaboratively with women we support, fellow trustees, staff, volunteers, partners, and others involved with Pearls.
• Understand relational approaches, recognising that meaningful change often happens through connection and consistency, even when our ways of working do not follow traditional models.
• Are open to growth and change, embracing the evolution of the charity as we continue listening and responding to the needs and aspirations of the women we work with.
• Bring strategic thinking and awareness of the systems we work within, helping Pearls navigate complexity while staying rooted in our purpose and values.

• Trustee board experience
• Lived experience in relevant areas
• Finance, financial strategy, fundraising
• HR, people/team development
• Trauma‑informed practice, health and wellbeing.
• Safeguarding
• Experience/leadership in charity, voluntary, health, or social care sectors

Pearls Project is at an exciting and defining moment in its journey. After operating successfully for over a decade under the umbrella of other charities, we are becoming an independent organisation with our own Board of Trustees. This next step will strengthen our governance, deepen our identity, and build the resources needed to grow our impact and sustainability.

Our new Board is currently being brought together, and we hope it will include people with a mix of lived, professional, and community experience who share a belief in trauma‑informed and relational approaches. Together, this new team will help shape Pearls’ culture, direction, and future strategy for growth as we take on independent charitable status.

As a Trustee, you will help guide Pearls through this period of development and transition. You will play an active role in strategic discussions and decision‑making, ensuring that the charity’s direction remains grounded in our core values of compassion, connection, and hope. You will also help ensure that the voices of the Pearls community, the women we support, our volunteers, staff, and partners, are heard and reflected in our strategy and approach.

We are building a Board culture that values reflection, curiosity, and shared learning. As a Trustee, you will be part of a team that supports one another to think deeply, ask good questions, and create space for feedback and new ideas. This collaborative, reflective way of working will shape how Pearls grows and strengthen the compassionate culture that flows through our staff, volunteers, and work with women.

This is an opportunity to help shape a small but growing charity at a crucial stage in its journey. You will work alongside others who are committed to developing compassionate and relational ways of working, even when that means doing things differently to the norm, and play a meaningful part in helping Pearls Project grow with purpose and integrity.

We are hoping to explore the possibility of a Co‑Chair so welcome interest in Chair/Co‑chair positions when board members apply.