TERMS OF REFERENCE
Position: Trustee, Swallowtail and Birdwing Butterfly Trust (SBBT)
OVERVIEW
Trustees have independent control over, and legal responsibility for the Swallowtail and Birdwing Butterfly Trust’s charity management and administration. You will play a very important, but unpaid role within SBBT.
You will be expected to share, with all Trustees, equal responsibility for the charity to ensure that the charity’s assets are only used to support or carry out its purposes, as agreed at our meetings.
Specifically:
- You and your co-Trustees must comply with agreed Board decisions.
- You must be able to demonstrate that the charity is complying with the law, is well run and effective, and you are able to provide your support as and where it is required.
You should also:
- avoid exposing the charity’s assets, beneficiaries or reputation to undue risk;
- not over-commit the charity;
- do what you and your co-Trustees (and no one else) decide will best enable the charity to carry out its purposes;
- avoid putting yourself in a position where your duty to your charity conflicts with your personal interests or loyalty to any other person or body;
- not receive any benefit from the charity unless it is properly authorised and is clearly in the charity’s interests; this also includes anyone who is financially connected to you, such as a partner, dependent child or business partner;
- with your co-trustees, strive to make balanced and adequately informed decisions, thinking about the long-term as well as the short-term;
- feel free to put forward ideas and thoughts that may assist the charity at any time.
Administration:
As a Trustee you must:
- be fully conversant with the SBBT constitution and its implementation, available upon request from the Secretary, see below;
- be willing to attend meetings as required or decline in writing (or by email) at least five working days before any scheduled meeting;
- be able to pass any additional agenda items to the Secretary for inclusion in a meeting Agenda where required;
- retain soft copies of signed minutes in PDF format, for your reference, as provided by Secretary;
- be fully aware that as SBBT is a Charitable Incorporated Organization (Charity No. 1174142), be willing to assist the Secretary with any information to ensure that the organization complies with the requirements of the Charity Commission in terms of registration, reporting, changes to governing documents, names of Trustees and other matters.
A Trustee Induction Pack is made available to all new Trustees.
If you are interested in becoming a Trustee, please write in the first instance to the Secretary, Dr Martin Partridge (martin@sbbt.org.uk), enclosing an explanatory letter, your cv and any other relevant material, such as a publications list.
