Trustee Role – Wirral Multicultural Organisation
Remuneration
The role of Trustee is not accompanied by any financial remuneration, although expenses for travel may be claimed.
Location
Meetings will be held in WMO Centre, 111 Conway Street, Birkenhead, CH41 4AF
Time commitment:
2 Board meetings per year + attendance at one/more subgroups
Reporting to
Board of Trustees
Role Description
To be a Trustee of an organisation is an exciting and fulfilling role. The most effective Boards are ones which benefit from individuals from a diverse range of backgrounds, experiences and skill sets. The role of a Trustee is to ensure that WMO fulfils its duty to its beneficiaries by delivering our vision, mission and values.
WMO exists to offer a range of professional and culturally sensitive services to improve the overall health and wellbeing of the local BAME communities. A key focus is to support more vulnerable members of the local BAME community by providing language support, advocacy, social support and activities, assistance to access primary care services and including advice and education services.
We achieve this by:
- Providing a centre that acts as a focus for various community activities for people from ethnic minority backgrounds on the Wirral.
- Providing multi lingual workers to help people access timely advice and support regarding employment, health, social services, education and welfare benefits.
- Providing a translation and interpretation service to enable people from Ethnic Minority backgrounds access health, employment and social care services.
- Celebrating our diverse communities
- Reducing isolation by providing a regular coffee morning, with themed awareness raising and celebration events
- Facilitating access to ESOL classes, mother tongue classes and other social and recreational activities.
- Providing a Day-Nursery for local children from diverse backgrounds so that their parents can acquire sills to be in employment.
The statutory duties of a trustee are:
- To ensure the organisation complies with its governing document - sometimes known as constitution, or memorandum and articles of association.
- To ensure that the organisation pursues its objectives as defined in its governing document.
- To ensure the organisation applies its resources exclusively in pursuance of its objectives - the charity must not spend money on activities which are not included in its own objectives, no matter how 'charitable' and 'worthwhile' those activities are.
- To contribute actively to the Board of Trustees' role in giving firm strategic direction to the organisation, setting overall policy, defining goals and setting targets and evaluating performance against agreed targets.
- To safeguard the good name and values of the organisation.
- To ensure the effective and efficient administration of the organisation.
- To ensure the financial stability of the organisation.
- To protect and manage the property of the organisation and to ensure the proper investment of the organisation's funds.
- If the organisation employs staff, to appoint the Chief Executive Officer and monitor his or her performance.
In addition with other trustees to hold the charity “in trust” for current and future beneficiaries by
- Ensuring that the charity has a clear vision, mission and strategic direction and is focused on achieving these.
- Being responsible for the performance of the charity and for its “corporate” behaviour; ensuring that the charity complies with all legal and regulatory requirements.
- Acting as guardians of the charity’s assets, both tangible and intangible, taking all due care over their security, deployment and proper application.
- Ensuring that the charity’s governance is of the highest possible standard.
As well as the various statutory duties, any trustee should make full use of any specific skills, knowledge or experience to help the board make good decisions.
The above list of duties is indicative only and not exhaustive. The Trustee will be expected to perform all such additional duties as are reasonably commensurate with the role.
Trustee Person specification
Individuals are sought who have a strong empathy with our mission to improve the quality of life for people from Ethnic Minority backgrounds in Wirral.
The Board of Trustees are jointly responsible for the overall governance and strategic direction of the charity, its financial health, the probity of its activities and developing the organisation’s aims, objectives and goals in accordance with the governing document, legal and regulatory guidelines. Trustees are individually responsible for complying with the codes of conduct expected of Trustees and for acting in the best interests of the organisation.
All trustees should be aware of, and understand, their individual and collective responsibilities, and should not be overly reliant on one or more individual trustees in any particular aspect of the governance of the charity.
Experience:
- Successful experience of operating within a board in a charitable, public sector or commercial organisation and/or of managing staff or volunteers in the charity sector
- Demonstrable experience of building and sustaining relationships with key stakeholders and colleagues to achieve organisational objectives
- A proven track record of sound judgement and effective decision making
- A history of impartiality, fairness and the ability to respect confidences
- A track record of commitment to promoting equality and diversity
Knowledge, skills and understanding:
- Commitment to the organisation and a willingness to devote the necessary time and effort
- Preparedness to make unpopular recommendations to the board, and a willingness to speak their mind
- Willingness to be available to staff for advice and enquiries on an ad hoc basis
- Good, independent judgement and strategic vision
- An understanding and acceptance of the legal duties, responsibilities and liabilities of trusteeship
- An ability to work effectively as a member of a team
- An understanding of the respective roles of the Chair, Trustees and Chief Executive
