Trustee with business development focus - Volunteer

Do you want to support the running of the charity that supports people in Berkshire’s hospitals?

Are you the person to develop and lead our business opportunities planning, alongside our existing trustees?

What difference will you make?

What do YOU get as a volunteer trustee with our organisation?

• An opportunity to exercise your strategic business planning skills, probably in a different environment or context
• An opportunity to influence and collectively-lead an organisation supporting all people in local hospitals
• A chance to expand and implement your understanding of our work, including our fundraising
• A chance to augment your experience of charities
• A boost to your career and CV, if needed
• Satisfaction of helping an organisation that supports local hospitals, thus giving something back to your community
  
  

What do we get?

• Your strategic skills, knowledge, understanding and experience
• Your abilities to influence plans for our charity’s future business and funding opportunities
• Enhancement to our overall governance and the Board of trustees; improvement in our charity governance and operational growth
• Your participation in our collective decision-making, contributing to all areas of our charity work
• Your enthusiasm
  
  

What do our beneficiaries get?

• The ability to continue our support for patients, visitors, and hospital employees
• A forward-looking and agile organisation, with a well-informed and well-managed Board of trustees
  
  

What are we looking for?

Here is some of what we would expect from our trustees; we appreciate you may want to develop more in some of these areas.

• Understanding of the needs of our beneficiaries is desirable; an empathy with them and their needs is essential
• Clear commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion, valuing differences to make better decisions and deliver better outcomes
• Experience of creating and delivering successful business development activities, in any sector
• Demonstrable experience of developing fresh projects from inception to monitoring
• Ability to analyse proposals, examine their strategic consequences and make concise recommendations as part of the trustees’ team
• A broad financial understanding and the ability to analyse, manipulate and present financial and other data to others, including to trustees
• Some knowledge of the charity and fundraising sector would be beneficial, but is not essential
• Marketing and public relations expertise, with communication and presentation skills, would be useful but is not a prerequisite
• Strategic vision; good, independent judgement; ability to think creatively, tempered by pragmatism and reality
• Ability to cooperatively work with the team of trustees, bringing impartiality and objectivity to decision-making
• Skills and ability to listen, even to dissenting views
• Willingness to speak your mind and to challenge other trustees and employees with good intent; able to make unpopular recommendations to the Board, if necessary
• Commitment to the organisation; willingness and ability to devote the necessary time & effort
  
  

What will you be doing?

Trustee with a business-development focus for Friends of Berkshire Hospitals

You could join the Board of the Friends of Berkshire Hospitals, a charity that improves the experience of patients, visitors, medical staff and others who work in the Royal Berkshire and Wokingham Hospitals.

Our charity grew from a Reading-only organisation set up in 1957, which itself grew from a charitable group in the 1940s. We’re now serving both Reading and Wokingham hospitals, and intend to expand our services and thus our charitable business even further to better serve all those in the hospitals. Our expenditure in 2024 was £366k, and we have plans to expand our business and fundraising operations outside of hospital premises.

Our Board includes people with experience and skills in the services we provide to those in hospitals, and we’d expect new trustees to have empathy with our cause and our beneficiaries.

We are looking for experience of developing a business, not necessarily in the not-for-private-profit sector, identifying new opportunities and relationships, creating and implementing our new marketing strategy.

We are a charity not a business, but we apply business principles to governing our organisation. We are looking for people from a variety of backgrounds to join our charity. We want to expand the diversity of our board, in all meanings of the word, and strongly welcome applications from people from less-represented groups.

You don’t necessarily need prior experience of charity trusteeship, as full induction to our organisation will be provided, plus specialist support as a new trustee, including access to external training.

We ask for no more than ten hours of your time per month, which includes all meetings, discussions, etc.