Trustee Opportunities

What do we need?

Several enthusiastic people to help us fulfil our ambitious plans:

• A Treasurer to take charge of our payments, accounts, budgets and forecasts

• A People Trustee, to recruit and induct new trustees & volunteers and help with training. We always need more resource!

• A Fundraising Trustee, to help with our routine fundraising activities and apply for grants

• An IT Trustee to help maintain and develop our system of computers, back-ups, printers, wi-fi, remote data loggers, etc

If you’d like to get involved in our museum but not in one of these roles, please get in touch anyway – there are lots of other things you may be able to help us with!

Expiry Date

30 November 2026

 

What’s involved?

General

Much of our trustees’ work can be carried out remotely, but they need to visit the museum at least once a month.

Trustees are responsible for our strategy and governance.  They generally have specific experience which allows them to take the lead in a particular area of the museum’s activities.  For example, our Collections Trustee heads up a team that cares for and catalogues our artefacts and other objects, while our Treasurer records our income, pays our suppliers and prepares our accounts.

All trustees chair a committee a week or two before each board meeting to review priorities in their area of responsibility, how to achieve them and progress.  They also attend a board meeting every 8-12 weeks where they review what’s been happening and what they want to happen over the next few weeks, months or years.

Specific

• Treasurer

  • We are a small museum with correspondingly small financial balances and transactions, but, as a charity, we have to manage and account for our finances as carefully as a large company

  • A large grant could increase our income and expenditure tenfold

  • Main responsibilities: manage bank accounts, pay suppliers, prepare and present quarterly and annual accounts

• People Trustee

• Our museum is run entirely by volunteers, so the People Trustee is an essential part of our operation

• • Main responsibilities: recruitment, training and rota management

• Fundraising Trustee

• Entry to our museum is free, so we rely on visitor donations and income from our programmes of talks, walks and other events to raise the money for our routine activities

• In addition, to fulfil our plans to enhance our exhibitions, we need to secure substantial grant income

• • Main responsibilities: marketing, manage the volunteers who organise our events, maximise donations, secure grants

• IT Trustee

  • We believe our systems to be adequate and well-maintained, but need help to develop them further

  • Main responsibilities: work with our IT volunteers to ensure our systems are secure and satisfy our needs

Get in Touch!

If you’d like to find out more about any of these roles, please email Paul Drake at people@tewkesburymuseum.org for more details.  He’ll send you a role description and arrange an informal chat and tour of the museum.

After this, if you’re interested in applying, we’ll ask for a CV or summary of your experience and will invite you to meet another trustee.  If all goes well, we’ll ask you to do some preliminary reading, sign some declarations and provide references.  We’ll then provide you with a comprehensive induction.

 

Background

We are a small, independent museum focusing on Tewkesbury and the surrounding area.  We are a vital community asset and an important part of the town’s appeal as a tourist destination.  We are run entirely by volunteers but strive for high levels of professionalism.  We are confident of gaining full Arts Council re-accreditation in spring 2026.

Our collections include around 7,000 objects or groups of objects, some of which are displayed in our six exhibition rooms.  We currently welcome 6,000 visitors a year, but have plans to attract 50% more.

This is a great time to join us!  Up till now we have been a well-respected but rather traditional museum.  To achieve our Vision – ‘to be the best small museum in Gloucestershire’ – we need to become more modern, enjoyable and inclusive.

We are in the process of delivering a £1m Transformation Plan:

• Phase 1, to repair our C17^th timber-framed building, was carried out in 2023/24

• Phase 2, to reconfigure the ground floor to expand visitor space and provide access to wheelchair users, will be carried out once we can obtain the necessary funding – one promising application was turned down earlier this year!

• Phase 3, to invigorate our exhibitions and expand our outreach and group visits, also depends on funding. We are currently carrying out a relatively small (£20k) project as a first step on this path

 

Equal Opportunities Statement

We are an equal opportunities organisation and welcome applications irrespective of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity/paternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.