Role Description
Time Commitment: 1-2 days per month
The core role of our Trustees is to ensure that Comic Relief is fulfilling its mission of a world free from poverty, supporting our Executive Team and other Board colleagues as much as holding them to account. Comic Relief is proud to have a widely recognisable brand with partners across grassroots communities, the third sector, corporate partners, media, and government, and our Trustees act as stewards of that brand as well as ambassadors.
Through all levels of Comic Relief, our colleagues have pride in representing our mission and values. As a Trustee, you will be playing a vital role in a critical conversation – how to achieve a world free from poverty.
Core Responsibilities
- Provide leadership, insights, support, and accountability to our Executive Team in fulfilling Comic Relief’s mission
- Ensure that Comic Relief is effectively pursuing its charitable objectives appropriate to our resources
- Ensure that Comic Relief remains financially and culturally healthy, and that we are compliant with charity law, company law, and any other relevant legislation or regulations, protecting and enhancing our reputation through good governance and personal conduct alike
- Contribute to important Board discussions and wider Board dynamic, appreciating that Comic Relief is a multidisciplinary organisation full of people with different experiences and insights
- Assist the Board and Executive Team in horizon scanning, anticipating and fielding risks as much as opportunities, bringing the outside world in
Person Specification
We are looking to appoint two Trustees alongside our Chair this year, with more Board recruitment planned for 2025. While there are certain skillsets we are currently prioritising, if you don’t meet our essential criteria but feel you could add value to our Board, please do contact our Executive Search Partners for a confidential conversation.
During this phase of recruitment, we are keen to appoint a Trustee who brings senior strategic finance expertise to work closely with our current Treasurer and Chair, with a view to becoming the new Treasurer following a handover with the incumbent over the year ahead. We are looking for an experienced CFO or senior finance specialist within a charity, public sector or corporate environment.
For the second Trustee, we are open to a cross-section of sectoral experience, though there may be a preference from the commercial sector (especially media, technology or adjacent) with a demonstrable commitment to Comic Relief’s mission and/or social good more broadly, for example in the form of charity Trusteeship.
Trustees are important stewards of Comic Relief’s culture, and we want to ensure that we remain an inclusive, open organisation where everyone who works here feels direct attachment to mission. Similarly, we are a complex organisation working through multiple routes to social change, and Trustees will need to demonstrate a keen understanding of what good looks like in such a setting – strategically, operationally, and culturally.
Aside from professional competencies, we are looking for values-driven people with high levels of emotional intelligence, who can lend not only their individual skills but help encourage those around them. Prior experience of sitting on a charity Board is not essential and we encourage first-timers as much as experienced Trustees, though it will be essential to demonstrate your understanding of the role of a charity Board Member and where the governance line lies.
Most importantly, we are looking for Trustees who share and want to be actively engaged in our passion for a world free from poverty.