Treasurers where are you

charitynewish

Hi
I am the founder of a wonderful charity that gives voice to young people about issues that matter bringing parents teachers and experts together through film - very important in today's economic climate and levels of criminality amongst young people. We are looking for a treasurer to handle our accounts filing and also to assist funder when we find one, does anyone know the best way to find a treasurer, we have tried inst of chartered accountants and REACH and nothing has surfaced, Please help - sorry for the detail but I am new on this site and not sure how you introduce yourself in this virtual way. Thank you for your much needed advice in advance.

missprice

Have you asked maybe in a local college, one that does an accounting qualification.
They may be students, but they could need the reference and treasurer work is not usually full time.
Failing that put a notice up in a school for a qualified parent.

Savvy_Sue

Welcome.

If you google volunteer plus your town / county / city, you should find your local volunteer agency or bureau, they may be able to advertise the vacancy for you.

But before you do that, have you worked out what you want / need the treasurer to do? Do you want someone to 'keep the books', monitor income vs expenditure, and deal with the practical aspects of money going out and coming in? A job description is well worth spending a bit of time on.

colino

The guidance given by the Charities Commission is pretty good and your first port of call, Reach, I'm pretty surprised haven't been able to help you. Did you just have a general enquiry with them or has it gone further and either geographically or technically there are no suitable volunteers? Either way, as your new to charities yourself you don't want someone learning on the job. Hold out for a reliable, checkable greyhead and you and the charity will gain benefits from them, not worry where your money is leaking too or getting unexpected bills.

Savvy_Sue

the other obvious point is that you must have a board of trustees - you may call them something else, but it can't be just you. There is a risk of becoming too homogenous, but it's also worth doing the whole networking thing. I'm thinking about the boards of the charity I work for, and the one DH works for: most of those on both of those boards has another connection with at least one other person. So our chair of trustees knows one board member through her church, they were both 'found' by our previous chair, and so on.

Enthusiastic board members should be good at enthusing other people, and they may know someone who may know someone who could do what you need.

Charityworker

We advertise any hard to fill volunteering roles here:
http://www.do-it.org.uk/

Usually we have a queue of people wanting to volunteer but the treasurer job is a notoriously difficult one to fill.

Also if you have a facebook your could try posting the vacancy on there.