Subject: Advice needed in recruiting a board of trustees
We are an educational foundation who, after being inactive for several years, is geared up for business and needs a new board of trustees.
The previous board were friends recruited in by the school's staff. This is no longer appropriate for us as we have very serious aims and objectives and need a grown-up board to see us through this.
A few basic questions:
1. how do you decide the size of the board
2. recruitment process - particularly, who (and how many) are on the panel to choose the board
Thanks for any assistance you can offer us through this process.
Best regards
Kristin
This comment was last edited on Feb 12, 2010
The number of board of trustees varies with the type of support an organisation needs.
The boards of trustees are vital to the successful management of your organisation. I would suggest if you haven’t already, you identify what it is that your organisation wants its trustees to do by identifying the skills and experience you require from your trustees; this will minimize skills gaps and ensure that your organisation ends up with a board of trustees who are unable to meet the needs of the organisation. Following this draft job descriptions, person specifications and roles and responsibilities outlines. Furthermore, decide on an induction plan for the new trustees to help them integrate into their role. Then create a an advert to advertise for the role and post them on popular sites such as charity jobs, forum 3 etc and some of the national newspapers allow for free volunteer postings from charities.
You need to decide if you want people to apply with a CV and covering letter or via application form. If you decide on an application form you need to create a template and make it available for applicants via your website or email or postal request perhaps. In relation to the interview panel I would recommend a panel of 3 people and it could be made up of the treasure, chair, vice chair or other senior members of the organisation. If you go for second interview you can have different people on the panel or use the same panel depends on your capacity. I would also recommend standardized interview questions to maintain consistency.
I recommend you ensure that you recruit trustees that have some adequate skills and experience in HR, strategy, IT, Fundraising/writing proposals, PR and marketing with some experience and knowledge in your area of work if possible. These are core skills that can be transferred into supporting key functions of the organisation and allows trustees to be more in-facing into the organisation. It is important that trustees understand how the organisation functions so that they are able to best align their skills and experience as well as understand the organisational challenges.
I hope this helps email me if you have further questions. Good luck
This comment was last edited on Feb 12, 2010
