Reach Volunteering Candidate Information Pack

Trustee – Voluntary Sector Expertise October 2016

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- Letter from the Chair -

Dear applicant,

I am delighted that you are interested in Reach’s work, and are considering joining our

board.

Reach plays a significant role in the voluntary sector, as the leading source of trustees and

promoter of skills-based volunteering.

We are at an exciting phase in our development. Last year we launched our new online

platform and we now have a flexible, personalised and, most importantly, scalable service.

We have the potential and capacity to grow and over the next few years we have ambitious

goals to double our activity, increase our impact and raise the bar in trustee recruitment and

skills-based volunteering. We want to raise the profile of Reach, and of the benefits that

skills-based volunteering can offer to not-for-profits throughout the UK.

To help us achieve our goals, we are looking for two trustees to join our board: one trustee

to contribute their marketing and communications expertise and a second trustee to bring

depth of experience and knowledge of the voluntary sector. Profiles of our current board

members can be found within this document.

I hope that you find this pack useful , and that you will be inspired by our work and by our

potential. We look forward to receiving your application.

Yours sincerely

Andrew Dent

Chair, Reach Volunteering

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Introduction

Reach Volunteering is the UK’s leading skills-based volunteering charity. For over 36 years we have helped charities find the skills they need but can’t otherwise access. We support charities to identify and promote their skills-based volunteering and trustee opportunities, we recruit people willing to donate their expertise, and we enable these charities and volunteers to find their perfect match. We support charities in three main areas:

strengthening governance, by recruiting Chairs, Treasurers or trustees with particular specialisms

increasing frontline capacity, by finding volunteers to co-ordinate or deliver services

strengthening the ‘back office’, by recruiting volunteers who help in areas such as the management of people, property or other resources, generating income, or raising the organisation’s profile

We provide a ‘light touch’ but holistic service, based on self-service and peer-to-peer interaction that enables us to offer our service free of charge to hundreds of small and medium sized charities, throughout the UK. We also offer some added-value services, which generate income for Reach. These include:

Premium TrusteeWorks– which includes creating promotional material and executive search

Employer supported volunteering About half our placements are board positions, the remaining half are a rich mixture of technical, management, operational and advisory roles ranging in duration from a few hours to several years. The one thing that they have in common is that they utilise volunteers’ professional expertise and have a high impact on the organisation. In addition to brokerage we also promote good practice in skilled volunteering and trustee recruitment, through resources, events and articles.

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The need for our work

Demand

Charities deal with some of the most intractable problems of society and yet they are amongst the least capitalised organisations; and as austerity bites, and budgets are cut, charities are being challenged increasingly to ‘do more with less’. Simultaneously, the sector is facing changes in the wider environment such as an ageing population, and the digital revolution, as well as more sector specific issues like the shift from grant funding to commissioning and the fall in public trust in charitiesi. Charities will need to do things differently over the next few years if they are to thrive, and this will require new skills and expertise. Skills-based volunteering can play a vital role in helping charities navigate through these challenges. Volunteers can expertise that charities often find it difficult to source otherwise. Volunteers often have a depth of experience that charities could not afford to pay for, or a specialism that more generalist staff do not have. Volunteers also bring a fresh perspective, often grounded in experience from another sector that can be helpful too. Volunteers can help charities deal with many current issues – for example income generation where volunteers can bring experience of tendering, commissioning, retail or of developing trading arms, or digital where they can advise charities on strategic approaches, or more operational challenges like SEO. Trustees have a crucial role to play in leading charities through these changes. Increasingly, charities are recognising the necessity of having a well-balanced board, with a breadth of expertise that aligns with their strategy. More boards are now aware of the need to recruit more purposively, and to reach out beyond their personal networks to fill skills gaps. It can be hard for smaller charities to attract trustees of the right calibre through their usual channels. Executive search tends to be very expensive and few boards have any budget for trustee recruitment. Reach is receiving more requests for chairs, treasurers and trustees with specific expertise. Although charities need these skills, this need does not automatically translate into demand for volunteers. Charities have to invest valuable time and effort if skills-based volunteering is to be effective: in thinking through the organisation’s requirements and the skills needed; in shaping these into an appropriate volunteering role; and then in recruiting, inducting and supporting the volunteers appropriately. Inevitably most organisations have little spare capacity to devote to these issues. Charities need support in thinking through how skilled volunteers can help their organisations move forward, and they need an efficient and effective way of recruiting volunteers for identified needs.

Opportunity

There is an abundance of people willing to volunteer their expertise – they just have to be asked in the right way.

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The ageing population means that more people are enjoying a longer and healthier ‘third age’. Whilst some need to keep earning, a growing army are in a position to donate their skills and are looking for interesting opportunities to do so. There is growing appreciation of the benefits of volunteering to this age group in terms of well-being. The personal and professional benefits of volunteering to those of working age are also being increasingly recognised by employers and individualsii. There are many reasons why people choose to volunteer – for example freelancers filling down-time or wanting to expand their portfolios; people on a career break, or wishing to try new opportunities before returning to the workplace; or individuals who simply want to have an impact on a cause they care about. Through our partnership with LinkedIn, we have seen that presenting a well-defined opportunity to a large audience can stimulate a supply of talented applicants. Many of these people were not actively looking for volunteering roles, which suggests that there is a large untapped pool of prospective volunteers. These volunteers come with levels of expertise, which can be far in excess of what a charity could have afforded, even if they had had the budget to recruit staff for these roles. The volunteers bring a fresh perspective, and, often, useful experience from other sectors.

Our collaboration

We work in close collaboration with other organisations to achieve a greater impact. Some of our current partnerships include: LinkedIn Our collaboration with LinkedIn has produced outstanding results: cross posting our volunteer opportunities at scale across LinkedIn enables us to promote volunteering to an audience of over 17 million professionals, many of whom had never considered volunteering their expertise. It has yielded a sustained increase in volunteer registrations, and in applications for roles, of over 60%. Other partnerships forged in the last couple of years that we are particularly proud of include:

Charity Governance Awards: with the support of the Clothworkers’ Company, and in collaboration with NPC and Prospectus, we launched the new Charity Governance Awards in 2016, shining the spotlight on good governance in the sector. The awards attracted over 100 high quality entrants and a very strong shortlist, and the award event and ensuing e-book were well received.

Charity IT Association: We have been actively involved in the establishment of this charity, which provides pro-bono IT support to charities. Its first ‘product’ is The Tech Surgery. We contributed to CITA’s development, and recruited many volunteers for its services. Reach’s CEO, Janet Thorne, sits on CITA’s board of trustees.

Funders Collaboration on governance: We are members of the working group, piloting new ways to support good governance

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Our impact

Reach typically makes 700 placements per year. Half of these are high impact volunteer placements and the other half are board placements, making us the biggest single source of trustees to the voluntary sector. Placement numbers dipped to 542 in 2015 because we implemented a wholesale digital transformation of our services. We had a couple of months ‘down time’, and also experienced challenges in getting users to record the outcomes of applications. Happily, placement numbers are now rising rapidly, with over 250 placements recorded in the last 3 months and we expect to make over 800 placements this year. A record number of 2,000 new volunteers have joined our register in the last year, and we are now recruiting an average of 270 new volunteers every month – a 60% increase on last year. Our volunteers have a significant impact on the charities in which they are placed, contributing crucial skills such as finance, IT, HR, marketing, social media and planning, and many years expertise, often at a level the charity could never have afforded to pay for. We estimate that in the last 12 months our volunteers transferred the equivalent of around £7.6 million of new skills directly to the voluntary sector. Over 80% of the organisations that we help have an income of between £5,000 and £1 million The value of these skills in terms of impact is harder to quantify but we know that they make a big difference to the charities in very concrete ways such as new websites, stronger boards, better HR policies or extended services. 75% of the charities we surveyed said that the volunteer had helped their organisation to become more effective, primarily in the areas of increasing capacity to deliver targets or take on new initiatives and improving the quality of work. 97% said that the trustee they had recruited through Reach had made their board stronger, particularly in the areas of bringing a broader perspective to the board, effective support and challenge to the CEO, developing the strategy and improving sustainability. For the beneficiaries of these charities, this means better-governed and managed charities, promoting their work more widely and delivering more services, of greater quality. Reach calculates that each high level placement achieved supports, directly or indirectly, an average of 50 end beneficiaries. Over the last year we estimate that some 27,000 beneficiaries, often some of the most disadvantaged and marginalised in society, benefited through our work.

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Case studies

The Counselling Foundation

Robert Cuming is CEO of The Counselling Foundation, which provides low-cost counselling, and training to people in the Hertfordshire and Greater London areas. He was aware they needed additional skills on their trustee board, particularly financial expertise and experience as their finance governance and risk committee needed strengthening. Gaining these skills was important as the charity was at that stage considering their future direction and strategy. They approached Reach to help them find a trustee with financial skills. After interviewing three candidates they offered Philip Needham, an accountant with risk and governance experience. Robert spoke about the impact that Philip had made at the Counselling Foundation: “He is absolutely fantastic for the organisation and well-respected by everyone. He met our expectations entirely. I wanted someone to contribute to our financial strategy, help steer the business, and be an ally. Philip has done all that. He’s been a huge support, is an experienced person to bounce ideas off and has stepped up to become company secretary and to chair our finance and risk committee. From a financial perspective he has changed the way we present our financial information, including departmental profit and loss accounts, sharpened the focus of our finance committee, given advice and guidance on financial matters and reviewed the charity’s governance and objects. It’s been a difficult time financially so Philip has been a great addition to us and has made a real impact.”

Robert said, “Philip has been an excellent recruitment to the team though we were

thrilled with the calibre candidates that came forward. We would be happy to use Reach’s services again.”

Resources for Autism

‘Resources for Autism’ needed a volunteer with accountancy experience to train the organisation in a new system they were implementing. Through Reach they recruited Mark Mercer-Deadman. Mark identified a number of fundamental problems in the charity’s accounting and business procedures and has overhauled their systems to make it more effective and efficient.

Mark Mercer-Deadman has significant experience of large-scale international projects, system implementations and data migration. On retirement Mark missed certain aspects of working in a commercial environment so he thought that working as a volunteer in certain additional roles could be rewarding. Mark registered with Reach and the process went smoothly. ‘I knew the sort of roles that would be of interest and rewarding to me and this clearly helped in the recruitment process’ said Mark. He now volunteers for Resources for Autism for about a day a week in the London office. He also took up on the role of Trustee for Citizen’s Advice Bureau in Hemel Hempstead that was also offered by Reach.

Mark has already had a major impact on Resources for Autism. Director of Resources for Autism, Liza Dresner said’ Mark is fantastic and has introduced major changes related to our accounting, business and IT systems. Just one example is his introduction of secure on-line card payments’.

Some comments received from charities through recent impact surveys

“Madeline worked with us to prepare an

up to date HR handbook, liaise with

lawyers to revise our employment

contracts and sort out our pension

arrangements. She also assisted with

several recruitment processes” T1

International

“We needed someone who offered some

“business expertise” and Stephen fills that

role. In addition you helped us recruit

Clement who also offers us similar skills”

North Somerset People First

“The new Trustee has brought with them

a wide range of new skills and experience

which is contributing to the long-term

sustainability of the organisation” Caxton

House Community Centre

“Two trustees came through your service.

Their impact has been monumental. I

have recommended Reach to at least five

other charities” Survive

“Brilliant experience in retail and cafe

museum settings” Wycombe Heritage &

Arts Centre

“We have had some excellent volunteers

through Reach who have made excellent

contributions to our services to older

people. Thank you very much.” Age UK

Islington

“It was great to have an “involved”

treasurer with a real interest in the

organisation as a whole” Home Start

“Alan has been a great addition as Chair of

our board and has also been incredibly

useful as a mentor to me as a new Chief

Exec.” Be Independent CIC

“He was able to bring very beneficial HR

knowledge and experience that we were

missing and he has been particularly

important with an HR problem that has

arisen since his arrival” CAB Sudbury

“Previously we did not have a trustee with

specific finance experience so Ed has

brought his expertise as a financial

director/accountant to our organisation”

The Laughter Specialists Charitable Trust

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Our plans Over the next three years we intend to scale up significantly – supporting many more volunteers and charities to find their ideal match, whilst also iterating and enhancing our service to increase its effectiveness and range. Our aim is to double the number of placements we make by 2019.

Scale is important to us both as an end in itself (more charities helped) and because it improves the effectiveness of our service (critical mass increases the chance of a successful match). With our new platform we can scale up our service efficiently and swiftly, without resource or cost constraints. However, quality is equally important if the volunteers and trustees are to make a positive impact on the charities that they join. We want our service to provide holistic support to the recruitment process so as to maximise the volunteer’s impact and we will

continue to refine and develop our service to this end.

To achieve our ambitious plans to scale, we need to raise the awareness of skills-based volunteering, and of Reach. We aim to do this through a range of strategies which include: promoting the benefits of skills-based volunteering and trusteeship by curating and creating good content and disseminating this effectively; developing campaigns and partnerships focused on themes, geographic areas, skills and sectors; and by sharing our data through third party websites such as LinkedIn. Please see our strategy in further detail.

Our goals for 2019 are

1. We will meet the skills needs of more charities 2. We will make volunteer recruitment more effective for both charities and volunteers 3. We will raise the awareness of Reach and skilled volunteering in the UK 4. We will demonstrate effectively, the impact of skills-based volunteering 5. We will achieve a secure financial future for Reach 6. We will develop our governance, internal structure and resources to deliver our

strategy

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Our current board

Andrew Dent (Chair) - With Significant experience at director level of programme management, stakeholder engagement, policy-making and operational delivery; Andrew is adept at leading multi-million pound programmes through the full life-cycle. As a former private secretary to the Queen and government director he has top level stakeholder engagement credentials and excellent leadership skills. A strong team player focused on securing high performance through visible leadership, Andrew is a Chair who is culturally and politically aware and able to manage complex change and meet challenging organisational targets.

Graham Warner (Treasurer) - Former CFO with in depth experience of all aspects of finance and operations in fund management companies and managed investment vehicles. Particularly knowledgeable on the systems, control, personnel and governance issues faced by fast growing entities in the sector. A chartered accountant and MBA graduate with over 30 years financial management and regulatory expertise, Graham also has considerable experience of providing financial accounting, corporate governance advice and administrative support to investment trust companies and their boards.

Jon Edwards – Jon had a long and varied career with Gillette International, holding a number of posts in Sales, Marketing and General Management in Europe, Central America and Africa. An experienced and committed corporate fundraiser for over 12 years, he has raised many hundreds of thousands of pounds for Reach and has helped to build and develop a number of long-term funding relationships. Alice Memminger - Alice is the Chief Executive of UpRising, a UK wide youth leadership development organisation. Alice has been working in the third sector as a consultant and senior manager for the past nine years with a wide variety of charities across the country. Alice has developed extensive experience and expertise whilst working with Boards and Senior Leadership Teams, gaining a strong reputation for transformative strategic plans and driving through ambitious change programmes. Mary Selfe – Mary was Director of Operations in a start-up company in Boston that specialised in providing students with learning opportunities. After moving to London, Mary joined Amnesty International where she focused on the campaign to help asylum seekers on their last appeal. She is currently a member of Reach's placement advisor team and also volunteers at the Prince's Trust where she helps in managing business mentors. Dominic Tinley - Dominic is an interactive media innovator with 20 years’ experience working across web, mobile and interactive TV projects in the areas of culture, education and society. He provides strategic advice and practical assistance on how new media technologies can be used to engage audiences as well as how to manage digital projects most effectively. With a career spanning from the BBC, Channel 4 and the Discovery Channel to the Houses of Parliament, Dominic is now a freelance consultant Dominic advising BBC Research & Development on collaborative innovation projects including work to explore the next generation of interactive video services.

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Role: Trustee – Voluntary Sector Expertise

Overview Reach enables not-for-profit organisations to flourish by connecting them with skilled volunteers and prospective trustees. We have recently launched our new digital service, which enables us to scale up our activity swiftly and efficiently, and to support many more organisations. Over the next 3 years we have ambitious plans to raise our profile and promote more widely the benefits of skills-based volunteering and good governance.

Role Description We are looking for a trustee who can bring a broad understanding of the voluntary sector, to help guide board discussions to ensure that the needs of voluntary sector organisations remain at the centre of our strategy and embedded in our development, and to advise on and help facilitate introductions to relevant partners, influencers and potential funders.

Core Responsibilities

Upholding and adhering to the highest standards of governance, in accordance with all legal and regulatory requirements

Providing leadership, contributing to strategic direction and being accountable for performance. To measure and monitor performance against strategic objectives and to identify and manage risk

Making a meaningful contribution to the Board, utilising your expertise, skills, knowledge and experience: scrutinising Board papers and ensuring your understanding to an appropriate level; actively inputting to discussions, saying what you think. Using good judgement and contributing to the decision making process, having courage to make difficult decisions where required

Being an inspirational and charismatic ambassador and an advocate at all levels for Reach

Helping Reach to scale by raising money and/or making the most of your influence, identifying opportunities and realising them

Challenging the Board, the management team and Board’s advisers constructively, asking questions, being inquisitive and welcoming challenge back. Ensuring accountability for delivery

Building constructive, positive relationships with other Trustees and staff with a willingness to listen and understand

Being responsive to a changing world, actively engaging with and learning about developments in the charity sector and beyond

Legal responsibilities Ensuring that the charity is well run, solvent and delivering its charitable outcomes

Ensuring funds are not placed at undue risk or misused

Ensuring the charity complies with regulation and law

Acting with integrity and avoiding conflicts of interest

Committing to the improvement of governance and the governing skills of the Board

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Formal guidance on the responsibilities of trustees can be found in the Charity Commission’s Essential Trustee

Person Specification We are looking for applicants with the following experience and skills:

Knowledge and understanding of the significant changes now affecting the voluntary sector, and awareness of policies, trends and other external influences, which have a bearing on Reach and its beneficiaries.

Broad experience of the sector, with good understanding of the needs of our core audience (charities with a turnover of between £50k and £2m). This may have been gained from working at a senior / leadership level in infrastructure organisations, membership or umbrella bodies, at a funder, or from working in several different not-for-profits.

An appreciation of the role that skills-based volunteering can play in developing organisation capacity and effectiveness

Well networked with sector leaders, key influencers, funders and others who can help support the work of Reach

Appreciation of the limitations and advantages of small organisations with limited resources, and enthusiasm for developing creative and resourceful solutions

Collaborative approach, able to work effectively with the rest of the board.

Desirable but not essential Expert knowledge in skills-based volunteering and / or good governance

Qualities

• An Inclusive style. • A persuasive personality. • Able to help lead a small but ambitious charity with vision and pragmatism.

Time commitment The board meets approximately six times per year though additional time may be required on an ad hoc basis depending on the specific needs or challenges faced by the organisation at any given time.

Selection process To apply, please forward your CV and a letter outlining your interest in, and suitability to, the role to luke.strachan@reachskills.org.uk. The closing date is 3rd January 2017. If you would like an informal discussion with the CEO, Janet Thorne, or an appropriate board member, please contact Luke by 10th December 2016 who will arrange this. Interviews will be held on 30/01/17 and 01/02/17.

i Boldness in a time of change – NPC, 2016 ii Connecting People, Participation and Performance - MGSM CSR Partnership Network 2013