Member of Finance Committee

What will you be doing?

Free UK Genealogy is a charity that provides free online access to UK family history records to help people research their ancestors. We provide birth/marriage/death indexes, parish registers, and census data and making them searchable through our FreeBMD, FreeREG, and FreeCEN services. We champion open data and open-source principles, offering databases with over 500 million records for public use without subscription fees, relying on close to 1,000 volunteers for transcription, website development and management.

Nearly all of the charity’s activities take place online through emails, shared documents and video calls.

Our strategy centers on Quality, Value, and Growth, aiming to provide free, accessible, and high-quality volunteer-driven transcriptions of UK historical records through open data principles, while continuously improving user experience, growing our databases and volunteer base and ensuring family history remains available to everyone.

Free UK Genealogy has income of £125,000 per year, of which 30% comes from donations from users and 70% comes from advertising on our websites. We have recently raised £30,000 in the Christmas Big Give to support the development of a new service - FreePRO - which is digitising, indexing and publishing information from UK probate records. Our modest costs are 75% staff, for our four full and part time staff, and 25% technology costs running the websites, databases and transcription software.

We are looking for a volunteer to join our Finance Committee for a three year term, which could be extended if desired. The Finance Committee has been established by the trustees and consists of two staff members, three trustees and two other volunteers (including this role). It meets once or twice a month, normally for around an hour over video calls, plus occasional ad-hoc working parties. It works with our Finance Officer, Chief Operating Officer, and trustees to oversee and advise the financial management of the charity.

The key responsibilities are to review, oversee and assist with:

• annual budget setting
• monthly management accounts and monitoring
• assessing revenue levels and income generation ideas
• annual financial statements, including relationship with the external accountants
• our financial controls, and
• our projections and financial plans.

The key priorities of the Finance Committee are to ensure that the organisation is well managed, that financial reporting is accurate and that appropriate action is taken to manage both income and costs.

What are we looking for?

We are looking for someone who has professional experience as an accountant, preferably UK charity accounting, and has the time and motivation to attend and contribute to committee meetings and provide ad hoc support. Additional experience of marketing, website advertising or fundraising would be advantageous, but is not necessary.

You do not need to be a genealogist, although curiosity and interest are welcome. We are particularly keen to hear from people who bring the following:

• Experience of supporting voluntary and charity organisations
• Online access is essential, along with confidence collaborating remotely through video calls, emails and shared documents
• Confidence working with both paid staff and other volunteers
• A pragmatic, collaborative approach, with an understanding of the realities of volunteer-led organisations
• Clear and thoughtful communication
• Enough time and flexibility to provide continuity over several years

If you enjoy providing your advice to help a volunteer-led charity to deliver value to our users, this role could be a very good fit.

What difference will you make?

Financial sustainability is vital to the ongoing success of the charity, giving confidence to donors and ensuring we can continue to provide the services that we were set up to deliver. Increasing income unlocks more opportunities to deliver more records of value to our users.

The charity is run with a mix of paid staff, external suppliers and volunteers. We believe an additional volunteer to the Finance Committee to provide expertise, advice and support will provide a valuable boost to the existing team.