Trustees’ Week 2022: Celebrating our Board

This Trustees’ Week we recognise the range of experience on our Board, why it is so important to us that our Board reflects the communities we work with, and we welcome two new trustees to the 360Giving team.

Celebrating experience on 360Giving’s Board and why it is important

Trustees’ Week is an annual event which celebrates and showcases the great work that trustees do and highlights opportunities for people from all kinds of backgrounds with all kinds of experience to get involved and make a difference. As a small team, the role of 360Giving’s trustees is key in helping us to achieve our mission and our vision for grantmaking in the UK to become more informed, effective and strategic. 

This Trustees’ Week we want to celebrate the range of experience on our Board and the value of having grantmakers at the heart of our work. To maximise our impact and achieve our aims to improve charitable giving, it is vital that our Board represents the range of stakeholders and funders we engage with so that we can better meet their needs and understand, support and positively influence the grantmaking community. 

Our trustees come from a range of working roles and have varied experiences in the funding sector, from small family foundations to large fundraising grantmakers, to community foundations and charities making grants to individuals. Alongside those working in funders, we have Board members working as consultants who are direct users of the data, supporting a range of foundations and funder networks. Our trustees are in the rooms and networks that 360Giving staff are not part of, providing valuable knowledge and insights. By having trustees with relevant and varied experiences, our work remains connected to the sector we work in, and our decision-making is more informed and strategic. Read more about our trustees on our Meet the Team page. 

Moreover, increased diversity of experience on our Board contributes new ideas and perspectives and helps our work continue to be innovative, open and agile in adapting to challenging times (the theme of Trustees’ Week), in which trustees play an important role.  

Being user-centred 

Not only is a user-centric approach and direct experience of our work important in our Board members and wider organisational model, but we also carry out user research to develop our priorities and in turn inform Board decisions. This was a particular focus for our 2022-25 strategy. The independent inputs that are the result of engaging with our community through working groups, consultations, surveys and interviews enable our Board to not only consider the personal perspectives and learning from their specific organisations, but also the views of the wider funding community. 

In the shaping of the strategy a number of Board members attended interviews with our key stakeholders to understand their views on what 360Giving should prioritise, how the environment was changing, and what our service users wanted and needed from us. By involving stakeholders in this way, we can use their wealth of experience, coupled with a Board of trustees who really understand our sector, to make sure we meet the needs of funders so they continue to publish their grants data openly, and we can continue to support people to use this data to improve charitable giving. 

But it is not just our Board. Our Stewardship Committee also provides a crucial role in our Governance, and also includes a range of grantmakers and data users who make sure that we are engaging our users and meeting the needs of stakeholders when managing the maintenance and development of our key asset, the 360Giving Data Standard. 

A warm welcome to our new Trustees 

Whilst on the theme of celebration for trustees, we are delighted to welcome two new trustees to the 360Giving Board this Trustees’ Week, Lucy Palfreyman, our new Treasurer and Adam Lopardo, our new Board member. With their experience from a large family foundation and community foundation respectively, we are looking forward to the insights they can bring to the team during this time of change, as we implement our new strategy.

360Giving was founded and established by the grantmaking community and it is vital for this to be reflected within our Board too. With Lucy and Adam joining this month, our Board is now majority led by people working in and with organisations that publish their grants data, or are about to publish their data, shaping our priorities, informing strategy decisions and supporting us to better serve the community we work with. 

Thank you Trustees

We’d also like to give a huge thanks to two trustees who are coming to the end of their terms of office this month, our fantastic Treasurer Geoff Chapman who has been invaluable in supporting 360Giving’s finances over the last six years and our committed Board member Manny Hothi who has served for three years. And to our existing trustees, we thank you for your continued support, advice and championing of 360Giving. We are excited to work with our new and existing Board members to help continue our work to deliver our strategy and make UK grantmaking more informed, effective and strategic. 

Find out more about the wide range of events, training and guidance available throughout Trustees’ Week.