Issue 24: Engaging young people
There are many benefits to having a broad range of skills and perspectives on your board as we looked at in Issue 20: Developing the Board. Trustees and leaders have to make sure multiple stakeholders, including beneficiaries, volunteers, staff and supporters, are heard in decision-making. Even if every group isn’t represented at the table, their voices and perspectives should be — take the time to listen.
Your charity might work with young people, in which case listening to their voices is particularly important to your mission, and something like a youth advisory board or recruiting some younger trustees makes immediate sense.
Even if you charity doesn’t work with young people, just as the corporate sector has to nurture younger talent through apprenticeships, work experience, training schemes, working groups, etc — the third sector needs to engage young people in the work of charities.
Issue 24 looks at ways charities can engage and inspire the next generation into voluntary and trustee roles as well as getting involved in activities such as fundraising and campaigning.
What’s in this issue?
- Eleanor Urben from Reach Volunteering shares the benefits that younger trustees bring to the board
- The purpose of a Youth Advisory Board
- Facilitating volunteering & fundraising — a look at some of the ways charities are engaging and facilitating involvement of young people and children
How young trustees benefit your board
by Eleanor Urben, Consultant at Reach Volunteering
It is estimated that only two per cent of charities have young people on their board. Whilst a survey, carried out by The Charities Aid Foundation, shows that 85 % of people under 35 would consider becoming a trustee. With those figures in mind, it is clear that charities should be exploring ways to recruit young people.
The benefits of young trustees
- Providing a different insight and perspective, which ultimately will lead to better governance.
- Benefits the charity sector as a whole as it helps to engage younger people with the charities and develop the next generation of potential charity leaders.
- Enthusiasm for learning the role as they are often keen to develop their existing skills whilst helping a charitable cause. This enthusiasm means that they will engage fully and will bring creativity and new ideas.
- Having new ideas and perspectives on your board challenges long standing beliefs and systems.
- If your beneficiaries include young people, young trustees can provide useful insight and perspectives on beneficiary needs and experience, and increase the board’s credibility in the eyes of this group.
How to attract them
Expanding your recruitment process and networks will enable you to reach and attract young people to your board. It is important that you signal your openness and recruit via multiple channels, beyond your usual networks.
One of the biggest setbacks young trustees face is having flexibility with their time, given that they are likely to be in full time employment. To overcome this potential barrier, be open to adapt to the needs of your trustees by giving plenty of notice prior to board meetings and scheduling meetings for a time which suits the board as a whole.
It is also important to offer young trustees an induction process to ensure that they feel supported and valued whilst gaining a deeper understanding of their role.
There are a variety of ways you can do this. An existing trustee could take on the role of a mentor to provide support and a point of contact for a young trustee. Offering resources, such as The Young Charity Trustees Guide developed by The Charities Aid Foundation, will also be useful. The Young Charity Trustee Group on LinkedIn provides a useful networking platform for young trustees to share their experiences, give advice and provide support.
Depending on the background and experience of the young people you have recruited, you might need to consider other ways of ensuring that they can participate on an equal footing with other trustees.
Consider how you can make your board papers more accessible, and your meetings more engaging. Giving young trustees a specific role or focus area that they can take the lead on can be a good way to empower them.
“Young trustees will increase your board’s diversity. As with any kind of diversity this will bring its challenges but the potential benefits are worth it. The board gains valuable new insights and perspectives from enthusiastic young people, resulting in more rounded and better decision making, whilst a young person has the opportunity to develop their existing skills whilst contributing to a charity they care about.”
Inspiration
Read about Leap Confronting Conflict, winner of 2016 Board Diversity and Inclusion award, and how the charity involves young people in its board.
Overall, figures show that there is a vast pool of potential young trustees out there who are interested in joining a charity board. Whilst it may take slightly more time and effort to reach and attract young people to your board, the benefits that they will bring are certainly worth it. One example is Vicky Smith, a young trustee with Focus Birmingham.
👉 Read the original article here.
Resource
Our Bright Future have a great resource on embedding younger trustees, auditing skills on the board, recruiting younger trustees, supporting them in onboarding and as they get involved.
👉 https://www.ourbrightfuture.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Young_Trustees_Advice_Pack.pdf
Resource
The Young Trustees Movement has just started a new podcast that gives young trustees an idea of what it’s like in the boardroom, designed to inspire and educate young people of real-life trustee scenarios and responsibilities.
👉 https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/model-boardroom-series/episodes/Introduction-e2g4g4c
Youth advisory boards
For businesses, the concept of a Customer Advisory Board is increasingly being implemented to help build customer-centric products and experiences. The idea being that it provides a structured way to gain feedback from their most loyal customers. This will inevitably help them in decision-making, but also involve the very people they want to adopt the new product.
With similar benefits, youth advisory boards are being adopted by some charities. There is a need to include younger people in the conversation, take on board their ideas, as these are the very people that are the future of the sector. For youth-centric charities, they or their peers may be the beneficiaries. Just as having people with lived experience on the board is good idea, having future potential trustees, decision-makers and charity leaders involved too in some way is beneficial for them and for the charity.
Teenage Cancer Trust’s board is made up of around 30 young people who have been affected by cancer and have had direct experience of TCT’s services. It is in their joining criteria, to have received support from them and be less than 2 years post-treatment.
The NCS describe their youth advisory board as “an integral part of our governance and decision making processes, ensuring we are held accountable and continue to listen to the voices of the young people we exist to serve as a youth organisation.”
What do they do?
Youth Advisory Boards vary in their formation and what they are involved in, but often include:
- Presenting research or ideas to trustee boards, staff and other stakeholders
- Getting involved in annual reports
- Crafting new policies
- Reviewing policies and safeguarding
- Media and communications
- Fundraising
- One-off projects such as a research, peer support group or resource
- Advocacy work and much more
Teenage Cancer Trust’s group are involved in “critical activities, such as helping recruit members of our Senior Leadership Team, creating our strategy and shaping our policy work. And that’s on top of things like helping us engage with more young people, develop peer support projects and helping to make our services even better across the UK.”
At Sculpt UK, the board gets involved in evaluating funding bids, policy work and its advocacy and campaigning work, as well as its own magazine communications.
Facilitating volunteering & fundraising
What Volunteering Matters is doing to engage young people in volunteering and the charity sector
Volunteering Matters runs a number of projects that engage young people in social action. They help facilitate and amplify the voices and actions of younger people to be more involved for positive change in their local communities.
They have 6 dedicated projects, The Team London Young Ambassador Project has helped 600 young people across 61 settings to design and deliver social action projects of importance to them and to improve their community. They were also involved in delivering training and workshops for other young people and the team at Volunteering Matters.
Other projects help young people engage and raise awareness of key issues such as mental health to help others in their communities and schools.
How the Salford Foundation is partnering with students from the University of Salford
This partnership between the university and Salford Foundation, a charity providing various support services for young people and adults, is providing an opportunity for students to volunteer with the charity and support vulnerable people. For example:
- Student placements in the Foundation’s law clinic allowed students to help advise on legal matters within the community alongside qualified solicitors. One student, Millie, worked closely with the Women’s Service team, where she provided pro bono legal advice to service users; working on complex family law cases.
- Students at the School of Health and Society also can undertake social work placements with the charity, providing counselling and therapeutic support to service users.
Encouraging younger people to volunteer as part of a team — Action for Children
Whilst Action for Children’s Action Squads is not solely aimed at children, with roles for 14 and up — the way it is positioned is towards families and younger people, in alignment with their charity’s purpose and mission. It also encourages people to form a team, therefore knowing they are supported by people they know, as well as the charity.
A volunteering/fundraising programme has to facilitate and empower people to do that. A couple of things that Action for Children do is convey the benefits of the programme for the individual in providing valuable transferrable skills:
- Empowering volunteers to use their creative energy.
- Gaining event management, fundraising, finance and admin skills which they can add to their CV.
- Meet new people and learn new things.
- Make a difference, after all they want to help out to support who the charity supports.
Moreover, they provide a clear pack to equip them to be involved whilst also allowing the volunteer choice and flexibility in that. This reduces any anxiety about not knowing what to do, and helps people feel supported by the charity they want to contribute to. They offer:
- Onboarding to get set up.
- A member of local fundraising to support them.
- A handbook of ideas and tips as well as safety and legal guidance.
- Their catalogue of E-learning courses.
- A Facebook group to link up with out Action Squads.
- Some gamification in a fundraising leaderboard.
- Use of their Public Liability Insurance.
- Other skills and opportunities.
Engaging young fundraisers
Julia’s House has a young fundraisers scheme — an award with Level 1, 2 and 3 certificates that children 16 and under can achieve by getting involved in fundraising.
The idea is that children can get involved and are automatically entered into the scheme, completing their first fundraising event to receive a Level 1 certificate and badge, before progressing through the levels with each subsequent event — thereby getting the recognition and support from Julia’s House.
Launched in 2022, Alex Wilcox, Public Fundraising Assistant at Julia’s House explains the scheme:
“We wanted to champion the difference young fundraisers make to Julia’s House and celebrate their commitment and support. The money they raise has a big impact on the children and families we care for.”
“The new Young Fundraisers scheme acknowledges their great contribution and hopefully provides them with a really positive experience of fundraising. We would love local children and young people to continue to fundraise for us and encourage them to take their spirit of giving with them as they grow older, which feels an important message at the moment.”
An A-Z guide of ideas
Whilst many larger charities have the resources to rank articles like “Fundraising Ideas for Kids” on search engines — like Save The Children’s- list of Fundraising Ideas, a list of ideas is not just a way to get people to discover your charity. It’s a way to facilitate engagement with your existing audience.
In Save The Children’s A-Z list of ideas — they tag the lists with who they are ideal or suitable for. Creating a list like this with the help of existing supporters could create an inclusive list of ideas that helps facilitate fundraising from a diverse audience, including young people and children.
Similarly, Dementia UK has a dedicated page for young people to get involved in fundraising, and as part of their school.
You can help facilitate engagement through a list of ideas that you can support, but that doesn’t just have to be limited to fundraising. It could include ways to get involved in volunteering, on the board, or as part of an advisory group.
Resource
Fundraising with young people — Chartered Institute of Fundraising
👉 https://ciof.org.uk/events-and-training/resources/fundraising-with-children-and-young-people
Resource
Working with young volunteers — an NSPCC guide
👉 https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/safeguarding-child-protection/working-with-young-volunteers/
To sign up to the list, go to website:
Thanks to Eleanor Urben at Reach Volunteering for their contribution this Issue.
