Trustee with Legal Experience - Volunteer

We are looking for a new trustee for our charity who has legal experience to help guide us through our governance decision making.

Municipal Charities supports 5 Almshouses with 47 residents as well as a grant making programme helping those in financial difficulties.

What difference will you make?

We became a CIO two years ago and are still working through some of the legalities of merging our eight underlying charities into the CIO. Legal expertise would help us with this in addition to our external solicitor.

We are seeking trustees interested in improving the lives of our residents as well as those in financial difficulty in Stratford-upon-Avon

Our Mission is to provide low-cost, self-contained accommodation for older people of limited financial means. In all we offer accommodation to 47 residents. People are able to apply to become residents if they are financially deprived and all residents have limited savings and are almost all in receipt of housing benefit. Our philosophy is to encourage independent living. We also offer support to the residents through our two part time scheme managers. We also run several outings each year for residents.

OUR OBJECTS

• The promotion of the establishment, continuation, efficiency and effectiveness of almshouse charities in Stratford-upon-Avon.
• The provision of social housing in the form of almshouse accommodation for people in need by reason of age, financial hardship,disability or other charitable need.
• The relief of poverty amongst current almshouse residents in Stratford-upon-Avon and other residents of Stratford-upon-Avon and the surrounding area by providing grants, items and services to individuals in need and/or charities, or other organisations working to prevent or to reduce the need, hardship or distress of such persons;
• Any other charitable purpose which shall be selected by the Trustees in their absolute discretion from time to time.
  
  

What are we looking for?

We are particularly looking to appoint Trustees who have skills and experience in one or more of the following areas

• Legal knowledge
• Charity Law experience
• Social Housing Property experience - helping us to manage our property portfolio of 5 Almshouses, a commercial office building, renovating another building and overseeing the quinquennial works, registering with the Land Registry
• Communication and IT skills - to help us to develop our website and manage our IT
• Financial experience - preferably an accountancy qualification, to support our Finance and Risk committee
• Human Resources - in particular experience with employment policies and procedures
• Health and safety knowledge to help with our risk assessments,
• Other skills may include project management, fundraising and charity governance.
  
  

We are keen to improve the diversity of our Board and welcome applications from all sections of the community.

What will you be doing?

Being a Trustee is an exciting opportunity for those with the skills and experience to become involved in developing and overseeing our future strategy and activities ensuring that the charity is fit for purpose in this new and very challenging era of the 21st century.

As a trustee you will contribute to the future development of the charity. We are currently involved in the development of our property portfolio as well as looking to develop new almshouses.

This is an exciting time to be joining Municipal Charities. We recently incorporated as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation and are amalgamating the assets of the majority of our eight linked charities in order to be able to offer a more streamlined support to our residents and to those in financial need in Stratford-upon-Avon.

We currently have 12 trustees and are looking for up to 3 more, one of whom at least with a legal background and / or experience in charity governance.

Our board works well with our small part time staff team of six people who work to support our residents as well as helping to develop the charity. We have a number of sub committees including People and Governance, Finance and Risk and the William Tyler Property committee. We expect trustees to join at least 2 sub committees that meet four times a year as well as the Board meeting which are also four times a year. We encourage our trustees to get to know our 47 residents. We are a small, friendly and relaxed team.