Volunteer Trustee with fundraising experience to join Swindon mental health charity | The Recovery Tree Charity

We’re a mental health charity in Swindon. We run café (the Olive Tree) and a community garden (TWIGS). We’re looking for a trustee to help fundraising to sustain our work. We help about 250 people every year.

What will you be doing?

Our business plan has four aims

• Communications strategy and digital presence. Being clear about what we want to say and to whom, producing / collecting the stories we want to tell, and usual digital media effectively to tell them;
• People planning. Increasing our capacity at staff and trustee level, and planning how to deal with any absence of a few key people;
• Fundraising. Our fundraising to date has been effective but ad-hoc. We want to put it on a more regular foundation, so that it’s sustainable for us;
• Service provision. Adapting our service provision to better meet the needs of people in the community and reducing barriers to participation.

We are looking for trustee who has a sympathetic understanding of people with mental ill-health, who can help us develop our fundraising. We have diverse sources of income which include fundraising by grant applications. Grant raising has been ad-hoc, and we want to make it more regular and build it in to our normal way of working.

What are we looking for?

We’re looking for someone with experience of fundraising who can help write bids. Someone who wants to help people with mental ill-health. Someone who understands the challenges of managing a workforce which is partly voluntary and partly vulnerable due to mental ill-health.

What difference will you make?

This role is about generating dependable resources so that we can continue to provide people who experience mental health problems with opportunities to regain confidence and self-esteem and learn new skills through gardening, craftwork and working in a café open to the public – thus taking steps towards recovery, further education or employment.

Recent quote from our beneficiaries include

“Since coming here, I have started coming out on my own after 2 years.”

“I now wake up and know my life is a lot happier and healthier, knowing that I am spending my time giving and getting so much back. My life would be empty without it.!”

Our leaflet for 2020-21 (the last year for which we have audited accounts) gives a bit more insight into what we do.

Before you apply

Please provide a cover letter detailing why you are interested in this role and your relevant experience. Interviews will be informal, over a cup of coffee or tea in the Olive Tree Cafe.

Causes

• Mental health

Organisation type

Charity

We help people with a mental health condition to lead fulfilling and satisfying lives.