Thank you for raising the profile of trusteeship as a volunteering opportunity. I agree that it’s widely overlooked, and I think I have gained a lot from my past trusteeships.
Trustee boards are typically also short of resource, so increasing the pool of applicants is likely to be a good outcome. I’m glad you’re doing this.
Other resources:
I have used reach volunteering before and found it to be variable. It’s run by volunteers (or was when I last used it) and the quality of the suggestions you get depends on the quality of your volunteers
Other UK-based resources include...
… do-it.org ( https://do-it.org/channels/trustee-finder ) This site has traditionally been the primary resource for people in the UK looking for volunteering opportunities, although its history has been chequered of late, and the site hasn’t always been up.
Some points on which skills people can use to add value:
I think the charity sector’s perceived skills shortage is in finance, which is both essential and the people with the right skills are scarce. (Source: conversations with many people in the sector)
I’m not convinced that digital marketing is a top priority for the sector—for some charities their intervention may be about operating digitally, in which case this is more useful, although they are also likely to be the charities which already have this savvy. For fundraising, I’m doubtful that digital marketing is that useful in most contexts
As a trustee, it’s unlikely that you can add much value with project management skills, unless it’s a very small charity. For medium to larger charities, a trustee should keep their involvement more strategic, so they wouldn’t actively manage projects. Knowledge of Prince2/lean/etc may have some marginal value
Finally, I would question the value of the £500 estimate:
The model does nothing to consider the variability in impactfulness of charities. Many people think that the majority of charitable interventions achieve nothing, and it seems odd to ascribe value to a charity whose work isn’t achieving anything.
Not only is the impact of the charity variable, so is the impact of the trustee. It’s entirely possible for a key trustee to double a charity’s impact or have no impact at all. Given that this is so variable, modelling this as a flat percentage seems like the model is glossing over a key input.
These are great points. I think I’ll edit the piece later.
Many people think that the majority of charitable interventions achieve nothing, and it seems odd to ascribe value to a charity whose work isn’t achieving anything.
Do you have any suggestions here? Perhaps people shouldn’t be trustees of charities they don’t think help? Or perhaps they could improve them?
Given that this is so variable, modelling this as a flat percentage seems like the model is glossing over a key input.
Could you give an estimate here? I really don’t know enough.
Thank you for raising the profile of trusteeship as a volunteering opportunity. I agree that it’s widely overlooked, and I think I have gained a lot from my past trusteeships.
Do you think you’ve gained things I haven’t accounted for. Is it something you would recommend? If so, what gives you that confidence?
The model does nothing to consider the variability in impactfulness of charities. Many people think that the majority of charitable interventions achieve nothing, and it seems odd to ascribe value to a charity whose work isn’t achieving anything.
Thinking again, I’m not sure I agree. The model assumes a 5% increase in effect. For a charity doing no impactful work that might mean making it slightly impactful, which doesn’t seem unreasonable—getting them to make impact assessments could do far more good than this. What do you think?
It probably depends on what you value. Based on your guess, for 42 hours of my time I could potentially cause:
-5% more cats adopted from a particular shelter
-5% increase in awareness of autism at partner workplaces
-5% more opera performances
-5% more women attending a particular ‘women’s empowerment’ conference
-5% more religious conversions
-5% increase in citations from research commissioned by a particular charity
-5% increase in protest attendance
Most of these things I imagine moving from ‘good but not cost effective’ to ‘good and still not all that cost effective’ or ‘basically useless’ to ‘still useless’. I don’t really imagine many of these charities changing categories from ‘useless’ to ‘good’ because of a 5% increase in productivity.
I agree. If none of the charities represented are ones which do things you think are valuable or can conceive of becoming valuable I suggest people turn down the offer.
However, perhaps you could get some budget moved from dog and cat shelters into factory farming or change the types of protests that your members attend. Some types of change would be efficiency though others could be new avenues or publishing impact. I think you are right to say you could get some sense of likelyhood of positive impact on being offered the trusteeship.
Can you think of a way to include this kind of variability simply? Otherwise I guess there is no way to know whether this is a good idea or not and I’m not sure what to do with that.
I think it would be easier to model the impact of being a trustee for a particular charity than a random charity—why don’t you try to adapt your model to include your guess about how impactful the specific charity’s aims are, along with the specific charity’s annual budget, how many trustees are on the board, etc?
You could just use it as a tool for your own decision making. Isn’t the point of this to help you, and others, decide if you would become trustees? That will necessarily depend on the position.
What I meant was, it’s good to tell people about the benefits of trusteeship. It’s also good to think about how that compares to other work. I think the quick calculation you did at the beginning shows that really well.
But trying to quantify the hourly benefit of trusteeship in general is like trying to quantify the hourly benefit of having a job in general. Some jobs are worth £3 per hour and some are worth £300. Rather than trying to calculate the average value, it’s better to find ways to pick the best jobs, or the best donation opportunities, or the best trusteeships.
So I really liked the idea of the article, and found a lot of it useful, but I would have suggested spending more time on figuring out which opportunities are the best rather than building a model estimating an average value.
You should definitely keep posting your thoughts! Take this not as ‘advice on what to post’, but rather as ‘advice on what to spend time thinking about (if you want to help me understand the pros and cons of bring a trustee)’.
Thank you for raising the profile of trusteeship as a volunteering opportunity. I agree that it’s widely overlooked, and I think I have gained a lot from my past trusteeships.
Trustee boards are typically also short of resource, so increasing the pool of applicants is likely to be a good outcome. I’m glad you’re doing this.
Other resources:
I have used reach volunteering before and found it to be variable. It’s run by volunteers (or was when I last used it) and the quality of the suggestions you get depends on the quality of your volunteers
Other UK-based resources include...
… do-it.org ( https://do-it.org/channels/trustee-finder ) This site has traditionally been the primary resource for people in the UK looking for volunteering opportunities, although its history has been chequered of late, and the site hasn’t always been up.
… small charities coalition ( https://www.smallcharities.org.uk/resources-trustee-positions/ )
… NCVO is the main sector body for the charity sector in the UK, and they have a site for trustee recruitment too: https://www.ncvo.org.uk/practical-support/information/governance/trustee-bank/vacancy-search
Some points on which skills people can use to add value:
I think the charity sector’s perceived skills shortage is in finance, which is both essential and the people with the right skills are scarce. (Source: conversations with many people in the sector)
I’m not convinced that digital marketing is a top priority for the sector—for some charities their intervention may be about operating digitally, in which case this is more useful, although they are also likely to be the charities which already have this savvy. For fundraising, I’m doubtful that digital marketing is that useful in most contexts
As a trustee, it’s unlikely that you can add much value with project management skills, unless it’s a very small charity. For medium to larger charities, a trustee should keep their involvement more strategic, so they wouldn’t actively manage projects. Knowledge of Prince2/lean/etc may have some marginal value
Finally, I would question the value of the £500 estimate:
The model does nothing to consider the variability in impactfulness of charities. Many people think that the majority of charitable interventions achieve nothing, and it seems odd to ascribe value to a charity whose work isn’t achieving anything.
Not only is the impact of the charity variable, so is the impact of the trustee. It’s entirely possible for a key trustee to double a charity’s impact or have no impact at all. Given that this is so variable, modelling this as a flat percentage seems like the model is glossing over a key input.
These are great points. I think I’ll edit the piece later.
Do you have any suggestions here? Perhaps people shouldn’t be trustees of charities they don’t think help? Or perhaps they could improve them?
Could you give an estimate here? I really don’t know enough.
Do you think you’ve gained things I haven’t accounted for. Is it something you would recommend? If so, what gives you that confidence?
Thanks for your time and input.
Thinking again, I’m not sure I agree. The model assumes a 5% increase in effect. For a charity doing no impactful work that might mean making it slightly impactful, which doesn’t seem unreasonable—getting them to make impact assessments could do far more good than this. What do you think?
It probably depends on what you value. Based on your guess, for 42 hours of my time I could potentially cause:
-5% more cats adopted from a particular shelter
-5% increase in awareness of autism at partner workplaces
-5% more opera performances
-5% more women attending a particular ‘women’s empowerment’ conference
-5% more religious conversions
-5% increase in citations from research commissioned by a particular charity
-5% increase in protest attendance
Most of these things I imagine moving from ‘good but not cost effective’ to ‘good and still not all that cost effective’ or ‘basically useless’ to ‘still useless’. I don’t really imagine many of these charities changing categories from ‘useless’ to ‘good’ because of a 5% increase in productivity.
I agree. If none of the charities represented are ones which do things you think are valuable or can conceive of becoming valuable I suggest people turn down the offer.
However, perhaps you could get some budget moved from dog and cat shelters into factory farming or change the types of protests that your members attend. Some types of change would be efficiency though others could be new avenues or publishing impact. I think you are right to say you could get some sense of likelyhood of positive impact on being offered the trusteeship.
Can you think of a way to include this kind of variability simply? Otherwise I guess there is no way to know whether this is a good idea or not and I’m not sure what to do with that.
I think it would be easier to model the impact of being a trustee for a particular charity than a random charity—why don’t you try to adapt your model to include your guess about how impactful the specific charity’s aims are, along with the specific charity’s annual budget, how many trustees are on the board, etc?
I don’t have enough money to do that kind of work for every charity and to do it for a specific one I’d have to know how representative it is.
You could just use it as a tool for your own decision making. Isn’t the point of this to help you, and others, decide if you would become trustees? That will necessarily depend on the position.
Sure though effectively that reads to me as “you shouldn’t have published this”. Is that what you mean?
If you mean “you should use a much more fine grained model if you ever get near a trustee board to decide if you should take it”- yes, I agree”
What I meant was, it’s good to tell people about the benefits of trusteeship. It’s also good to think about how that compares to other work. I think the quick calculation you did at the beginning shows that really well.
But trying to quantify the hourly benefit of trusteeship in general is like trying to quantify the hourly benefit of having a job in general. Some jobs are worth £3 per hour and some are worth £300. Rather than trying to calculate the average value, it’s better to find ways to pick the best jobs, or the best donation opportunities, or the best trusteeships.
So I really liked the idea of the article, and found a lot of it useful, but I would have suggested spending more time on figuring out which opportunities are the best rather than building a model estimating an average value.
You should definitely keep posting your thoughts! Take this not as ‘advice on what to post’, but rather as ‘advice on what to spend time thinking about (if you want to help me understand the pros and cons of bring a trustee)’.