We will be supporting lived experience trustee roles, for a trial period. If all goes well, we'll make this change permanently.
We believe strongly in the importance of diverse and inclusive boards, and the value of having a broad range of perspectives at the table. Trustees with first-hand experience of the issues you address or the service you provide can bring powerful perspectives and play an important role in shaping your strategy. Recently, we have seen an encouraging number of organisations hoping to use our service to recruit board members with lived experience. Unfortunately, we have been unable to help because our service focuses on infrastructure skills like finance, operations and digital.
We are extending our criteria
We are extending our criteria for a trial period. Organisations will now be able to post opportunities for trustees with lived experience either with or without specified professional skills. We will review every opportunity as normal, and the rest of our criteria will still apply.
Volunteers who don’t meet our criteria for professional skills but would like to apply for a lived experience role are welcome to apply using a ‘guest’ account. If they don’t have a CV, they will need to add a covering letter instead, but they don’t need to disclose any details that they’re not comfortable sharing.
Although our service is designed with a skills requirement in mind, we won’t be asking volunteers or trustees to quantify or detail their lived experience in the same way we ask about skills.
During this trial, we’ll be keeping a close eye on things in the hope that we can make a permanent change.
If you recruit for, or apply to, a trustee role focused on lived experience, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Please email holly.meacham@reachvolunteering.org.uk with any feedback you’d like to share.
Advice on recruiting for lived experience
Organisations that are recruiting for lived experience can find some useful guidance in the following:
- The Trustee Recruitment Cycle for valuable guidance on building a diverse and inclusive board;
- Getting on Board’s guide How to Diversify Your Charity’s Board, which includes a great chapter on recruiting for lived experience; and
- Bayes Business School’s resources for inclusion and participation of trustees with lived experience.
