Role profile
Role Description
Trustees are collectively responsible for:
- upholding and adhering to the highest standards of governance
- ensuring we meet our fiduciary and wider legal responsibilities
- providing leadership, contributing to our strategic direction and how we can most effectively deliver
- scrutinising performance and holding the executive team to account for delivery against strategic objectives, and
- being an ambassador for Demos and supporting the executive team in fundraising.
Person Specification
Experience
We are looking for people with a background in at least one of:
- Significant experience of fundraising from foundations (large and small) and working with family offices
- Recent senior business experience and networks
- Experience of influencing major stakeholders: politicians, business leaders, trade unions, civil society organisations, opinion formers and journalists
- Experience of our four focus areas: collaborative democracy, public service reform, a citizen economy and more trusted technology.
All applicants will need to show us
- A sound and well-developed appreciation of governance; knowledge of statutory and charity regulations and guidelines would be useful but it is not essential.
- Strong and well developed networks, bringing contacts and relationships to Demos that assist our research or influencing activity, potential partners for projects, or donors and supporters to fund our work
- Experience of setting strategic direction and supporting delivery, using analytical skills and wise judgement.
- A team player who can work collaboratively with the rest of the Board, challenging constructively when necessary.
- A desire to increase your knowledge and understanding of, and commitment to, the mission and values of the organisation.
- Ability to represent Demos and its work effectively as a trustee and supporter of the charity.
- Sound financial skills would be useful.
About Demos
Demos is the UK’s leading cross-party think tank producing research and policies that have been adopted by successive governments for over 30 years.
Policy-making is now either too divisive and partisan, or too technocratic and not ambitious enough and so is failing to solve the big, difficult problems we see growing around us today. As a result of these failures, citizens are divided, the economy is leaving people behind and our democracy isn’t trusted to provide the solutions.
We need a more collaborative democracy, that puts people at the heart of policy-making, to start to address these problems by improving policy-making, strengthening citizenry and increasing trust in the political system. By creating partnerships between politicians, industry, civil society and citizens, we can start to solve our problems.
What we do
Demos builds bridges between politicians, policy-makers, experts from business, civil society and academia, and citizens to imagine the new ideas, create the policies and to tell the stories that will transform Britain.
We have three strategic methods to deliver our work: participation, policy-making and influencing.
We focus these activities across four pillars:
1. Public service reform
2. A citizen economy
3. More trusted technology
4. A collaborative democracy
How to apply
For more information about the role, and details on how to apply, download the Trustee candidate pack.
Closing date is 31 August 2024