Our CEO and Artistic Director, Sarah Gee, talks us through how the Trainee Trustee Scheme came about, and why it’s vital to open up the world of board governance.
On the third day of my working life, I found myself taking minutes in a board meeting. I was utterly terrified, sitting in a room with people at the top of their profession, barely able to remember everyone’s names. It was a life-changing moment.
I’d been treasurer of the student union at music college, so understood how committees worked, but I’d never seen a strong chair in action and certainly didn’t know terms like quorate, charity beneficiaries or capitalising expenditure. Despite being profoundly grateful for my early experience, and sitting on (and even chairing) boards for over 25 years, it wasn’t until we were recruiting new trustees for Spitalfields Music that I realised how fundamental that early exposure had been.
We were very excited about the calibre of applicants, who – at least on paper – seemed perfect matches for our charity. However, what became very obvious was that while some had strong professional and personal experience, their knowledge of what it meant to be a trustee was very much lacking. Their views seemed based on watching The Apprentice, or some outdated notion of the board as mill-owners and the staff as employed only to do their bidding. It struck me that being able to see how a board worked in practice before having the legal and financial responsibilities of trusteeship would be a perfect way to improve the pool of applications.
And so our Trainee Trustee scheme was born.
It’s a very simple idea: TTs join us after an interview process and attend all board meetings over the course of a year. We provide formal training, delivered by our friends at Arts Fundraising & Philanthropy, and informal opportunities, such as pre- and post-board meeting online Q and A sessions, and being matched with an existing trustee, so there’s a chance to ask what it’s really like. Typically, the TTs start the year by prefacing everything with “I’m sure this is a silly question, but…” and end the year realising that nothing is more silly than not asking about something one doesn’t understand. Our previous chair, Professor Maurice Biriotti OBE, was hugely supportive of this programme, and made it clear that everyone sitting around the board table had an equal voice, and our incoming chair is just as enthusiastic. Indeed, some of the most perceptive comments have come from TTs, as they come to things with fresh eyes and different perspectives.
The Trainees see everything, warts and all. They’ve gone through possible merger discussions, deep thinking about business models, and recruitment of a new chair. They’ve been surprised, delighted and daunted, sometimes in just one meeting! We also offer tickets for our summer festival performances, and invite them to join us in our creative leadership and community work, so they have a 360-degree view of the organisation.
We’ve often been asked why we welcome more people onto our scheme than we could ever place on our board, to which the answer is ‘karma’. As a learning organisation, we believe very strongly that we have a responsibility to invest in the ecosystem that underpins our sector – and we know that our former TTs have gone on to take up volunteer roles with several very high profile charities. We have one former TT as a trustee, and she’s brilliant; others have concluded that trusteeship is too much for them at this stage in their careers, and that’s also a great outcome. There’s nothing worse as a CEO than someone who promises much and delivers little taking up a precious board seat.
Imagine the impact if every arts organisation ran such a scheme. We’d have many hundreds of potential trustees, ready and trained to refresh our governance structures. Too many people – myself included! – are recycled through multiple trustee roles. We need more diverse voices, including younger people, people with disabilities, and a far wider range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds as they have different life experiences and perspectives which are vital and must be heard.
It’s been such a privilege to work with the Trainee Trustees over the past three cohorts, and I’m excited to see who we take with us in 2025.
Our 2025 Trainee Trustee Scheme is open for applications until Monday 4th November, 10am.
