Trustee supporting Fundraising, Marketing & Stakeholder Engagement

Parity’s mission is “excellence in services and support for children and adults with multiple disabilities, their families and their carers”. Our aim is to ensure that the needs of as many students and their families as is possible are recognised and met. The need for our services is increasing, as evidenced by the current waiting list and we are already taking steps in the next phase of addressing those needs (work has just begun on refurbishing new premises in Farnborough).

Our future involves raising awareness, influencing decision-makers and securing additional premises from which we can deliver our services. Obviously, raising funds to support this strategy will be particularly challenging given the current (and forecast) economic conditions. You will be helping our organisation to focus our fundraising, marketing and stakeholder-engagement strategy.

To better support both the evolution and success of our fundraising team and our strategic objectives, our Board is looking for someone with recent and relevant experience of fundraising, marketing, stakeholder engagement or similar attributes. It is not expected that you will become heavily-involved operationally with fundraising, but all your advice, assistance and any practical help would be welcomed, alongside your strategic overview. 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.

If you can think strategically and plan long-term, you have the primary skills needed by our trustees; you’ll also need to be able to work collectively with other Board members. We are a charity not a business, but we apply business principles to governing our organisation. 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.

We welcome your interest and can offer a no-obligation discussion by video, and any assistance with application you may require. 

Skills

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

• Clear commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion, valuing differences to make better decisions and deliver better outcomes
• Understanding of the needs of our beneficiaries is desirable; a strong empathy with them and their needs is essential
• Strategic vision
• Good, independent judgement
• Ability to think creatively, tempered by pragmatism and reality
• Being capable of a ‘birds-eye’ strategic view of fundraising is essential
• A clear understanding of diverse income streams/engagement platforms
• Ability to work with our senior management and our fundraising team to update our fundraising and engagement strategy
• Able to collaborate, inspire and motivate others
• Able to contribute to the development of a strong overall business strategy with long-term goals and planned steps for pursuing our charitable purpose and achieving our vision (Cf. 2025-2030 Charity Plan: available upon request)
• Skills to analyse proposals, examine their strategic fundraising consequences and make concise recommendations as part of the trustees’ team
• Ability to cooperatively work with the team of trustees, bringing impartiality and objectivity to decision-making
• Previous recent experience in a senior role in marketing/engagement/fundraising, ideally in a charity or not-for-private-profit environment, is welcome
• Having sales, marketing or similar qualifications would be welcome, but are not essential