At a glance

Skills

Business development / Sales
Fundraising research / Bid writing
Strategic development and planning
Project / programme management
Property management

Where

Stoke-on-Trent, ST1 5HQ

Mainly at home

Travel limit? Ideally trustees should live within 15 miles of the charity but further afield will be considered

Time

Mostly during office hours Estimate of time needed:
0-5 hours / month Trustees meeting in-person to discuss core business every other month (90min), & the alternate months we meet online for 1hr to discuss finance.

Deadline

30 Apr 2025

Visitors from Fifth Day

Welcome to Reach Volunteering. We are a community and registered charity that connects people, skills and good causes.

To apply for this role, and any other on our platform, you need to be based in the UK, have at least three years of experience using the skills you wish to volunteer in a professional capacity or have lived experience (for trustee roles). Read more about our criteria.

Emmaus North Staffs is a Stoke-on-Trent based charity supporting hundreds of vulnerable local people every year suffering from furniture poverty, in particular child bed poverty. We are seeking new trustees to help drive the charity forward.

What will you be doing?

We aim to maintain a board of trustees which has people with individual expertise in leadership, organisational development, housing, marketing, fundraising, health and safety, legal and finance.

The board of trustees meet once a month on a rotation of in-person (core business) and online (finance only).

Trustee meetings are currently during the day, almost always a Friday morning. However, we could look at moving meetings to an evening to help those trustees who work during the day to participate and attend meetings.

In addition to full trustee meetings, we have a sub-committee that meets regularly, reporting to the board, which is the “Business Development Group”. This group meets every 2-3 months and membership is open to all trustees and staff.

All trustees are encouraged to visit and maintain regular contact with the charity, and where possible, spend time working alongside staff & volunteers.

Duties & Responsibilities

Trustees are responsible for providing appropriate oversight, governance and leadership to Emmaus North Staffs to fulfil its charitable aims.

Each trustee must:

attend board and other meetings as appropriate
read and scrutinise board papers and other communications
read discussions and provide guidance and support on new initiatives
abide by Emmaus North Staffs's policies and procedures, ensuring these are effectively implemented throughout the organisation
participate in activities to promote Emmaus North Staffs to existing and new stakeholders
contribute on other issues or areas of special expertise
accept ultimate responsibility for directing Emmaus North Staffs’s affairs, ensuring it is solvent, well-run, and delivering its charitable outcomes

What are we looking for?

We are seeking trustees who ultimately have a core passion to make a difference to the communities of North Staffs. We would love to hear from people with a variety of backgrounds to help us drive the charity forward. In particular skills and experiences in one or more of the following areas: property development, housing, homelessness, retail, or business development.

What difference will you make?

Some key points about Emmaus North Staffs:

We currently run one of the largest charity shops in the UK which is in the city centre of Stoke-on-Trent
We have a core staff team of 11, which is made up of 4 part-time and 7 full-time employees
We have a strong team of 20-30 volunteers including some regular volunteers plus ongoing placements with many local partners such as VAST, Saltbox, Probation, and with 3 different Keele University degree courses
We receive around 750 referrals for furniture and appliances every year for vulnerable clients and tenants suffering from furniture poverty. These come from various local partners such as housing associations and local councils and we deliver around 3,000 items to these people every year
A crucial part of the referrals is our ‘beds for kids’ initiative where we deliver hundreds of brand-new bed bundles to local children without a bed of their own to sleep in – we have won several local awards for this work in the last year!
We have just commenced a 3year Lottery-funded project to establish a small 'crisis support team' to work with some of our referral families to identify and deliver additional support for whatever that household needs to help them survive and thrive
We have a well-established eBay online shop with one member of staff working on this full-time
We have a large woodwork and upcycling workshop run by a local volunteer which produces some very quirky output for the shopfloor

Before you apply

Interested people should submit a CV and a covering letter via the Reach website ensuring the covering letter addresses the details on this advert.

About Emmaus North Staffs

Causes

Children / families

Community safety / victim support / domestic violence

Housing and homelessness

Local / community

Poverty relief

Organisation type:

Charity

Emmaus North Staffs supports the most vulnerable residents across our communities who are suffering from 'furniture poverty', a significant multi-million pound issue with a deep impact but which...