What is the role of a Trustee?

Margaret Wooding Jones shares more about her role and how our Trustees enable and support the work of the charity.

Margaret Wooding Jones is Chair of the Board of Trustees. In this blog Margaret shares more about her role and how our Trustees enable and support the work of the charity.

The Board of Trustees can sound like a very official and scary body of people and something that ‘somebody else’ who is terribly important get involved with.  I’d like to blow those misconceptions out of the water.  Trustees are neither scary nor intimidating, but are a group of people with a heart for the purposes of the charity; they can bring individual expertise on one of a variety of subjects and in the case of Rock UK, they also have a passion for the mission God has given us.

I was invited to consider being a Trustee in 2011 having been part of the leadership team of a large residential Christian community.  Initially I attended a Board meeting to get a feel of how things worked, which gave existing Board members the opportunity to decide whether I would fit in with their needs.  I was then formally elected at the next AGM and have been a Board member ever since!

My work and passion is to see young people transformed and discipled well in their Christian journey, so for me, the well-being and transformation of the staff team is high on my priorities.  Until recently I have chaired the Mission and Staffing sub-committee and I am now Acting Chair of the Board.

Being a Trustee requires me to attend four Board meetings per year with occasional conference calls and a steady flow of emails relating to Rock UK business.  My role along with the rest of the Board is to prayerfully advise, encourage and guide the CEO and his team to fulfil the purposes of the Charity and to see young lives transformed.  Nothing gives me more pleasure than to visit the centres and see that in action as children climb heights they never thought possible, step off the Leap of Faith, take to the water for the first time, or to watch an instructor kneel down beside a child and give them the quiet reassurance they need.

If you have expertise in education, outdoor adventure, business management, buildings, charity management or anything else that might benefit Rock UK  and be able to offer four or five days per year, we would be interested to hear from you for an initial conversation.  In the first instance, please contact Malcolm Maclean, our CEO via email info@rockuk.org.

Margaret Wooding Jones has worked in a variety of roles in mission and HR and was for many years heading up the Volunteer Programme at Ashburnham Place.  She is now a Licensed Lay Minister in the Diocese of Rochester. 

Find out more about all our Trustees