May 13, 2021
What we've learned about inclusive trustee recruitment
Claire Brown, communications lead
We care a lot about building diverse communities. It’s in our vision. It’s what we do.
This includes the little community of humans behind the scenes - our staff and trustees.
We’ve been improving the way we recruit trustees to help us build a more inclusive and diverse organisation. Here’s what we’ve learned...
The charity sector has a real problem with trustee recruitment
Did you know that less than 10% of trustee vacancies are ever advertised?
It sounds pretty shocking, yet when you consider that 97% of all charities are small charities it starts to make a bit more sense.
When people start a charity, like when Ben founded Local Welcome, it’s pragmatic to recruit from your existing network when your capacity and resources are so small (and sometimes it’s the only realistic option).
Our original board of trustees - though all excellent humans, experts in their field and diverse - were all either friends of Ben, people he’d worked with or friends-of-friends.
Like so many trustees, they were recruited by a polite tap on the shoulder.
But as a maturing organisation that prioritises inclusivity we’ve learned that shoulder tapping is the enemy of this commitment.
It’s tough to admit but tapping someone on the shoulder is exclusionary
Tapping someone up - however brilliant, lovely or diverse they may be - means you’re potentially excluding someone else from a position of influence.
The person doing the tapping will have their own conscious and unconscious biases and this is what leads to stats like this from the Charity Commission:
Men outnumber women 2 to 1 on boards
71% of Chairs are men
75% of trustees have income above the national median
And then there’s this report that found that 92% of all trustees are white.
Yes, trustees are volunteers who give their time freely to support a charity they believe in but we should also recognise that being a trustee is a respected and privileged role.
As a charity that has ‘build diverse, supportive teams’ as one of it’s values we’ve taken this seriously and designed an inclusive recruitment process for new trustees.
We know it’s not perfect but we’re proud of the thinking that went into it and delighted with the final outcome, so we’d like to share what we’ve learned.
It’s possible to bake inclusivity into your entire recruitment process
Write an inclusive role description, role advert and information pack
These documents are likely to be the first glimpse a potential trustee has into your organisation so it’s vital they convey your values and commitment to inclusion.
You want people to think ‘there’s a place for me here’ and feel confident enough to apply. This isn’t about writing a blanket ‘diversity statement’, it’s about carefully choosing content and words that are going to draw people in and not exclude them.
Here are some tips for inclusive recruitment documents:
Be clear about the time commitment so people with caring responsibilities have enough information to decide whether or not to apply.
List the responsibilities in plain English, without jargon and at all costs resist the urge to make things sound fancier or more scary than they are.
Use narrative, not bullet points when describing the skills and experience you’re looking for. Research shows that women are deterred from applying if they don’t feel they’re 100% qualified, so narrative helps to mitigate the ‘I don’t tick all the boxes’ effect.
Only ask for the level of experience that’s actually needed for the role, and make it clear when experience would be ‘helpful’ but not essential.
Avoid using phrases like ‘high-performing’ and ‘dynamic’ as they deter less confident candidates from applying (and they’re actually pretty meaningless).
Run your documents through this nifty gender decoder tool. Research shows that while women are deterred from applying for roles coded as masculine, men are not deterred by language coded as feminine.
Think about your charity's values and find ways to help them shine through in your words. Remember, it is possible (and we’d argue essential!) to write a professional document that is also friendly and welcoming.
You’re welcome to take a look at ours for inspiration.
Make applying as simple as possible and refuse pre-application ‘chats’
You can find out all you need to shortlist someone based on a covering letter that responds to the role description and a summary of their career history. Not everyone has an up-to-date CV and it can take a long time to produce one, so consider accepting Linked In profiles or a simple job history instead.
Some applicants might ask for a chat with someone from the organisation before they apply. It’s a reasonable request but this kind of chat can easily lead to biases when it comes to shortlisting and interviews. We found that when we explained this to people they understood and applauded our commitment to a fair process.
Plan an inclusive advertising campaign
This is your opportunity to reach beyond your existing networks. Spend time researching the best place to advertise your roles and don’t forget to reach out to diverse groups connected with your industry, in our case this was Black Women in Tech.
There are some specialist organisations set up to help improve diversity on boards who may be able to help you. We used Getting on board, Women on boards and Reach Volunteering, alongside Charity Job, who all allow you to post trustee roles for free. (In our experience, Reach Volunteering was an excellent source of motivated and diverse candidates.)
Get the role out there on your social networks and encourage your community to share it. If you have a newsletter you can share it there too.
If you’re recruiting for a new Chair, like we were, it’s a good idea to recruit for new trustees at the same time as it’s possible someone who might make a great Chair might only have the confidence to apply for a trustee position.
Shortlist based on the skills and experience required in the role description
This sounds obvious but put together a proper shortlisting process where you score candidates against the skills and experience you asked for in the role description.
This helps you avoid only shortlisting people who have the most impressive or extensive CVs (and accidentally excluding younger people, people with disabilities that have prevented them from working, or people who have taken time away from work to care for children or parents).
It helps if you have a diverse group of two or three people scoring to help mitigate unconscious bias. Get together to discuss your scores afterwards so you can pick up on any scoring anomalies and decide who you’re going to invite to interview.
Have a diverse interview panel
This can be tough if your organisation isn’t as diverse as you’d like it to but try your best. Think about inviting a volunteer or service user onto the panel and/or someone who isn’t senior in the organisation (in our case we invited one of our leaders). Make sure that they are equally and respectfully included in the process and decision making.
When you invite someone to interview, ask them if they have any accessibility needs.
Your interview questions should reflect the skills and experience you asked for in the role description and you might also want to ask questions to find out how a person’s values align with those of your organisation.
Ask each interviewer to score the answers to each question so that you’re not making decisions on ‘gut feelings’ or ‘hunches’.
Remember, you don’t necessarily have to choose the top scorer. You could decide to have a score which defines a candidate as ‘appointable’ and then select the person who you feel would add the most value to the organisation even if they weren’t the highest scorer. The intention of this should be to include a candidate who may not have scored the highest but who is nevertheless well-qualified, aligned with your values and would increase the diversity of your board.
Plan a ‘warm welcome’ for your new trustees
Once you’ve recruited your new trustee(s) think about how you can give them a warm welcome into the organisation. How will you help them get to know their fellow board members and the staff team? Who can they go to with questions? How will the Chair ensure their voice is heard during their first few meetings? What documents can you give them access to that will support them in their role?
Taking time to build inclusivity into your recruitment brings big rewards
Our new process helped us to recruit a brilliant new Chair of trustees and two further, equally brilliant, trustees.
We had 26 applicants for trustee and 4 for Chair and while we didn’t do any diversity monitoring we can say the gender split was about 70/30 women to men (we don’t know if any non-binary people applied).
Of the 9 people we interviewed 8 were women.
Our new Chair of trustees is Clare Young (who originally applied for a trustee role). And we also welcomed Kylie Havelock* and Niketa Sanderson-Gillard to our board.
We’re absolutely delighted to be able to bring their skills, talents, experience and diversity to our team. They officially started their new roles in January and they’ve already had a big impact.
As a small charity there is always more we will be able to do when it comes to inclusivity but we’re pleased and proud that our ‘tap on the shoulder’ days are over.
*Kylie is a Clore Social Emerging Leader Fellow and talks about her experience of becoming a trustee in this interview with Clore Social.