Volunteers' Week 2025 - Recognising the Volunteering Contribution of Trustees

While they have their own week of celebration in November each year, we felt we couldn’t let Volunteers’ Week go past without a nod to the amazing work of trustees across Newcastle and Gateshead – and we especially wanted to acknowledge the contribution of our own fabulous Connected Voice trustees. 

Trustees are too often the unsung hero volunteers of charities. They take on a significant amount of personal responsibility when they join. It falls to them to ensure that the charity is governed well, and this means being responsible for a wide range of different things including ensuring the charity’s purpose is delivered, making collective decisions, ensuring finances are well managed, managing conflicts of interest, ensuring the charity reports appropriately each year, and ensuring the charity has appropriate safeguarding measures in place. 

That list of responsibilities doesn’t really sound like much fun, does it? The truth is that, because of the level of responsibility required, many charities have trustee vacancies, and it can be quite difficult to find people who have the right skill mix to support your charity, and who also have the capacity to devote enough free time to supporting a good cause. 

And yet, across our area of Newcastle and Gateshead, we have many people who do just that. Trustee meetings are not always exciting – often they will focus on things like thinking about risk, approving budgets, and ensuring that the organisation complies with regulations. But trustee boards are a great place to improve your CV, skills, and most importantly, to be part of a team that is working together on a common purpose to benefit others.

There are over one million trustees on charity boards across the UK – that’s one million people who are committed to helping a charity deliver its purpose. It is quite an awesome thing to choose to do as a volunteer, which is why we wanted to take the opportunity this Volunteers’ Week to thank our Connected Voice trustees for their commitment and support. 

We have 11 trustees on our board. They are brilliant group of people with a diverse range of skills and experience, from a GP practice manager, to a chartered accountant, a charity chief executive, and a director of an organisation supporting African women. I feel very fortunate to have such a skilled group of people to help and guide us, and their support over the time I have been here has been outstanding.

We have had to make some tough decisions in the past year, including the decision to close our payroll service after 30 years. The trustees didn’t shirk away from it – they asked the right questions, sought advice, and took decisions that were in the best interests of the charity. 

Our trustees take pride in our work, challenge us to do the best we can, and are so supportive of our staff team. They are engaged, but they don’t interfere in our day to day work – they strike the right balance of having a good oversight of what we do, and a desire to take a strategic approach to the planning and delivery of our work. 

In my opinion the best thing about our trustees is they enjoy working together – we have a good dynamic in our meetings and a everyone has a sense of humour. For people undertaking a trustee volunteering role, where the responsibility is significant as I’ve described, the ability to have a bit of fun and build a good team dynamic is essential. 

A huge thank you to all our Connected Voice trustees – and thanks to everyone who volunteers in a trustee role – you really are awesome!