Trustee

Trustee

London N1

Share your expertise as a Trustee of London’s most vibrant community for adopters

We Are Family (WAF) is an adoption community group providing opportunities for adoptive and prospective adoptive parents to meet and share experiences of parenthood.  We strongly believe in and advocate supporting the parent to support the child. We also pride ourselves on being a parent to parent group offering not advice but a shared experience.   

With the Government’s ongoing programme to regionalise adoption agencies, now is a critical opportunity for organisations such as ourselves to make a real impact on national policy.

We are looking to strengthen and enhance our board of trustees with new skills and ideas. We would like to appoint two new board members to join our committed group of ten existing trustees. Board meetings take place every two months in Central London.  Trustees are also expected to serve on at least one sub-committee (Services, Strategy or Finance and Resources) and will need to be able to do around 10 hours of work per month. The normal term of appointment for a trustee is three years.

The new Trustees will need to have experience of at least one of the following areas at a senior level:

• Fundraising, especially charity fundraising and in particular raising funds from the grants/foundations sector.
• Policy development, communications and lobbying, ideally in relation to the third sector.
• Operational experience in relation to service delivery, including supporting and managing volunteers.

“Senior level” will be broadly indicated by having worked professionally or at senior management level in business, the public sector or the voluntary sector.  Trustees should be able to demonstrate some skill or experience in strategic planning, setting targets, and monitoring and evaluating performance as well as good organisational and communication (oral and written) skills.

It would be desirable for a new trustee to have one or more of the following:

• Knowledge and understanding, from a professional perspective, of the adoption/permanency sector and/or current adoption practice and procedure.
• Experience of adoption as a single parent, to support the Board’s understanding of the needs of this particular part of the WAF community.

However, we are very willing to consider expressions of interest from suitably qualified individuals who are not connected to the adoption community, provided they can demonstrate a commitment to the values and mission of WAF.

WAF is a diverse organisation whose members come from all of the different communities within the London area.  We seek to reflect this diversity in our board of trustees and therefore encourage suitably qualified candidates with black, Asian and minority ethnic heritage or with disabilities.

If the opportunity to join an exciting, rapidly growing new charity appeals to you as someone able to make a valuable contribution, please send your CV and a covering e-mail setting out why you would like to join us and how you meet the requirements set out above to us via the link.

Closing date for applications is 4 January 2019. We aim to conduct online interviews during the week commencing 7 January.