Trustees play a crucial role in guiding and making key decisions for charities, contributing significantly to their communities.
We gratefully acknowledge the invaluable work of trustees in Oxford.
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Trustee experiences
Discover inspiring stories from individuals who have embraced the role of trustee.
Hannah's journey with VIP+
I work with other VIP+ trustees to support the work of the charity, which provides positive activities to children in the care system, in alternative education and at the hospital school. We are a very small charity, so it means that as a trustee I do both strategic and operational work.
Day-to-day I spend some time supporting our member of staff who coordinates activities, exploring new partnerships to provide more activities to children and young people, or helping to write fundraising applications. During trustee meetings we review the work of the charity, our finances and our future plans. We also make sure that our member of staff has the support that she needs, and we discuss opportunities that may have come up to increase the support for the children we work with.
Supporting VIP+ as a trustee is a great opportunity to support more children and young people through a larger organisation rather than simply as an individual.
For those people who have volunteered for a while, becoming a trustee is a great opportunity to bring that experience to a charity board and help inform the direction and work of the organisation.
Hannah McDairmid - trustee at VIP+
Dwayne's role at the Dovecote Centre
Dwayne volunteers his time as a trustee at the Dovecote Centre based in Blackbird Leys, providing Human Resources knowledge within the project.
In his role Dwayne helps to support children and families, one of the most important reasons he is a trustee is that it enables him to give back to his local community.
As a Trustee with the Dovecote Centre Dwayne is able to benefit his local community by supporting the development of children's wellbeing.
The Dovecote Community Children and Families project is a community led, parent managed scheme delivering inclusive, engaging, integrated and effective services to support the development and wellbeing of children, children with disabilities and families in The Leys.
You have a chance to develop skills and gain further experience that could be beneficial to your life as well as employment.
Dwayne John - trustee at the Dovecote Centre
Miranda's perspective at The Archway Foundation
I joined in March this year as part of the young trustees programme. I sit on the trustee meetings to try and bring another perspective to the meetings, as well as learning about how being a trustee works and what it involves.
I do it because it is a great way to learn about being a trustee whilst also getting a chance to be involved in a charity that does really important work. It is interesting and rewarding.
Being a young trustee in my case benefits the community through the support of the Archway Foundation. It is an amazing charity which has an invaluable impact on loneliness in our community. I think in general, having a wider range of people being trustees can help make our community more cohesive and inspire more people to take notice of problems and do things to improve our community too.
Miranda Stoddart - trustee at The Archway Foundation
Sara's experience at Oxfordshire Age UK
In practice, this means helping to set the charity’s strategic direction, having an oversight of finances to make sure we are using resources responsibly, and supporting the staff team to increase the impact of their day-to-day activities.
Being a trustee is an incredible learning opportunity, and being a young trustee is even better, as you get to serve on a board with members who are typically a few decades older and wiser than you. It is also a great insight into a different way of working, particularly if you haven’t had professional work experience in the charity sector before and it allows you to make a difference at an organisational level, rather than working with directly with people who benefit from the work of charities.
Having significant frontline volunteering experience is really helpful if you are a young trustee - while you may not have lots of experience on strategy or finances, you will have experienced charity services alongside beneficiaries.
There is lots of training available to make sure you can learn the more technical aspects of the job, and typically older trustees will have that experience so you can learn from them too.
Sara Fernandez - trustee at Oxfordshire Age UK
Emma's involvement with Yellow Submarine
I have been a member of the trustee board at Yellow Submarine for 6 months. I help support the directors at Yellow Submarine, to ensure the charity effectively supports people with learning disabilities and autism in Oxfordshire.
Over the next few months, I am going to work on a governance project which should be a great opportunity for me to share my expertise and for me to learn more about an area of their work.
I have found being a trustee really interesting and an incredible personal development opportunity. It has been so inspiring to see the amazing work that Yellow Submarine does. I work for a small charity so it is really interesting to see how they do things differently and what we can learn from them and what learning I can share with them too.
Emma Anderson - trustee at Yellow Submarine
Jack's contributions to West Oxford Community Association
Jack is 23 years old and a Graduate Finance Analyst.
I’m the Treasurer at West Oxford Community Association. I attend the management committee meetings and have an overall responsibility for managing and reporting on the community centre’s finances.
I love working with numbers and therefore the role of treasurer played very much into my strengths and interests, enabling me to enjoy everything I’ve done for WOCA. I love being a part of and helping the community, I was a student in Oxford and getting involved was an excellent way to continue with my community engagement.
We have a thriving centre in west Oxford with engagement and users of all ages and being treasurer enables me to contribute to ensuring that continues for the foreseeable future. The team there are all very friendly and receptive to having new ideas from a younger person and I would recommend anyone to get involved, either there or for a similar organisation.
I think all organisations benefit from having a young voice on their trustee board. Young people have different perspectives and ideas which can be invaluable to the organisation. I also think it helps you as a young person develop by getting a role with some good responsibilities and the chance to meet and work alongside people you otherwise wouldn’t.
Jack Langley - trustee at West Oxford Community Association
