This is a practical guide written by young Trustees. Part 1 is about what it’s like being on a Board as a young person. This Part 2 is for organisations — what can you practically do to foster a culture of recruiting and nurturing young talent. Thank you to collaborators Gillian Katungi and Lucy Stanfield for writing with me and sharing their own experience and wisdom.
I’m a Trustee with 2050 Climate Group. We work to empower young people to take action on climate change. Everyone from the operational team and volunteers to its board of trustees, are young people.
It’s not common to have young board members though. There has been plenty of research on both the lack of young trustees and on the benefits of diverse boards. Despite making up 12% of the UK’s population, 18–24 year olds are less than 0.5% of all charity trustees (Charity Commission). Research shows that a typical trustee is most likely to be white, male, and over 60 years old.
Yes, young people might have less experience, knowledge or skills compared to someone in a senior and leadership role. But the experience of being in a trustee role will equip us better for the future and bring a new, relevant perspective to your organisation.
There are many benefits to having young people on your board of trustees — see list of resources at the end. But there’s plenty of work the sector can do to create or improve the conditions of attracting and nurturing these relationships — from planning recruitment and ways to conduct interviews selection to being more open about working together and challenging internal culture. Below are some practical tips from my own experience and from other young trustees.
Planning
Remember that recruiting young people can be a form of tokenism. Make sure that whoever gets the role is not just there to be ‘the token young person’ and that they are just as meaningfully involved and supported as any other colleague. Assess yourself against these three criteria (based on NOBL’s DEI):
- Diversity of people and perspectives comes down to your hiring processes. Thinking about moving the conversation from ‘we don’t get enough diversity of young people applying for trustees’ to thinking about what skills are actually needed and what processes are needing to change to reflect this. Do you need to do a skills gap analysis? A perspectives analysis? What experiences are not representing?
- Equality in policy and practice. Evaluating the systems in place to ensure there is no bias towards a certain type of person or characteristics. Is there a way to review these by an external expert? How might you take the findings into practice?
- Inclusion via voice, power and culture. Creating a space where there’s no fear of taking risks and no judgement. Map out and discover your power structure — is there a balance of power within your organisation? You can gather internal and external feedback and get help from another expert organisation to evaluate.
The advert
- Think about your language and use plain English. A lot of young people don’t know what a trustee is but they might be fantastic for the role. Explaining exactly what a board member does within the charity and how they contribute to the organisation is really important. There are also online tools, like Hemingway App, you can use to check your content and help you write clearer.
- Specifications in the recruitment ads can be off-putting (e.g. “we’re looking for people with 5 years experience in HR”). It’s worth showing that varied perspectives and experience is more valuable than years of experience.
- Limit your ‘must-haves’ and delete your ‘nice-to-haves’. A shorter list makes the ad not just easier to digest but also more inclusive.
- Link in with the right networks (e.g. young people charities and support networks) to check your language and test the ad.
- Make sure to signal your openness to attracting new and diverse talent — sometimes this means being explicit.
- Think about where you are advertising the role. One of the issues around recruiting young people is that often they simply aren’t aware of opportunities. If you’re only advertising on the same websites and networks as you always have, you could be inadvertently excluding talent. Go beyond your usual networks, channels and methods and be mindful that when your colleagues share it with their networks, it’s often less likely to reach new audiences. Look at university and college job boards, the beneficiaries of your organisation, the communities you serve, local radio, sector networks, community job boards, newsletters, diverse range of charities and support networks.
The application
- Don’t write too many documents. A lot of files and long documents can be confusing and off putting. Keep it to two core documents — application information, and a recent report showing the crucial information about your organisation. Provide relevant links to other info.
- Make sure both advert and application are accessible. Use accessible fonts and formats (for example, easy to read for people with dyslexia).
- Don’t ask for too much input. What are the key things you really need to know? Sometimes, a CV and a couple of short questions might be just enough.
- Be open to answer questions by potential candidates and make yourself approachable by those considering to apply. For example, in the form of job shadowing, Twitter engagement, phone call or over coffee.
- And remember, young people are not hard to reach. It’s likely that the organisation, language, and methods are hard to understand.
The interview process
- Review your recruitment panel or team. Set clear roles amongst the panel and ensure it’s as diverse as possible. Unconscious bias affects everyone, no matter how progressive you think you are — make sure you tackle it.
- Offer flexible time slots. A commitment to diversity and inclusivity should mean thinking about when your candidates can meet with you. Evening and weekend time slots are less likely to exclude people who are working, studying or who have care responsibilities.
- Be flexible and creative. Many young people don’t know how to articulate their skills so think about dynamic ways of exploring their experience and skills. Gillian Katungi was asked to run a workshop with a group of young people as part of her interview, to highlight planning, engagement and facilitation skills. This was an excellent way to assess rather than simply talking about it.
- Give people time to prepare and make necessary arrangements — often people are asked to interview at extremely short notice. This can cause unnecessary stress for those who need to make arrangements for care, work or studies and doesn’t leave people with prep time. .
- Pick a format which is inclusive, considerate and be aware of the power dynamics. For example, having an interview panel of 4 people versus one young person is likely to be intimidating for anyone, let alone a young person. I was once shortlisted with 9 other women in a group interview format for 4 available positions in a women’s charity. It made for a very weird atmosphere that benefited people whose voice is more dominant. Group interviews might be tempting so that current board members’ time is optimised but time is also precious for your potential candidates. Treat them with respect, allow time to get to know more about them, and consider formats which work for both introverts and extroverts, shy or outgoing people.
- Speaking about yourself in an interview is only one way to share your skills, think about opening up your interviewing skills e.g. allowing someone to present, or run an activity for the panel etc. Or you can also allow potential candidates to choose their preferred format.
- Regularly test and review your interview questions with trusted experts. No one likes an outdated question. During one interview, one of the questions was ‘how to organise a gala event’. Can you think of a young person who’d casually say ‘gala’ in a sentence?
Your organisation
Governance is interesting, and can be exciting, for any person regardless of age. Fundamentally, your current board needs to challenge the perception of what it means to be a leader to widen the definition and perception of a Trustee. This means going further than the traditional view of someone being at a certain stage of their career, with tons of senior management experience. This means valuing factors such as age, ethnicity, lived experience, digital skills, and so on. Does your board mirror the experiences of the charity?
Ultimately, if you’ve decided to launch recruitment and diversify your current board — great! But also make sure to review your current processes and (re)design them, having in mind what a new trustee would need. For example, how are your meetings held and facilitated? Are you prepared to listen to your new trustees? Do you give plenty of notice for board meetings? Can board members join in remotely in meetings? Do you use collaborative digital tools? How do you support your trustees? What structures could you put in place to reflect what people contribute and how much they’re engaged? Make your meetings more engaging and ensure ‘board papers’ or whatever else documents you produce are accessible (including language used, format, and distribution).
Resources;
- https://youngtrustee.co.uk — advertise roles open to young trustees here
- https://creativeaccess.org.uk/ social enterprise recruitment site aimed at young people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds
- We need to do more to attract young people to sit on charity boards -The Guardian
- How young trustees benefit your board by Reach Volunteering
- The Young Trustee Movement
- Young Trustees Guide
- A guide to designing inclusive recruitment https://inclusivedesignrecruitment.co.uk
