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Category: Vacancies

Wanted: honorary Treasurer for our Council of Management

Are you an experienced treasurer or qualified accountant with experience of working with charities? Would you be able to volunteer a day per month to help the Finance Manager oversee the charity’s financial health and controls, to advise and help it carry out its duties and objectives?

The role would largely oversee the finance function in the charity by reviewing our annual financial statements and statutory requirements, and monitoring management accounts with our Council of Management. As a member of the Council of Management, the Treasurer would play a key part in identifying and monitoring opportunities and risks to the charity in using its resources to effectively achieve its nission and outcomes. The Treasurer would sit on the Officers Group, which meets regularly between full Council meetings.

Objective

Church Action on Poverty is a medium-sized national registered charity and company limited by guarantee with an annual turnover of £747,009 (2023-24 annual accounts). Poverty robs people of dignity, freedom, and hope, of power over their own lives. We believe that our vision – an end to poverty in the UK – can become a reality. 

As a member of the board of trustees (Council of Management), the overall role of the Treasurer is to maintain an overview of the organisation’s affairs, ensure its financial viability and ensure that proper financial records and procedures are maintained.

Key responsibilities

  • Oversee all financial aspects of the charity, on behalf of the Council of Management, to ensure its short- and long-term viability.
  • Advise the Council of Management on strategic financial oversight.
  • Assist the Chair, other honorary officers, Chief Executive and Finance Manager in ensuring that the Council of Management fulfils its duties and responsibilities in the financial governance of the charity.
  • Ensure the charity effectively uses its financial, human and other resources to deliver its mission and outcomes.

Duties and tasks to fulfil the key responsibilities

In partnership with the Chief Executive and Finance Manager:

  • Ensure that the charity operates within the financial guidelines set out in current legislation, by the Charity Commission, in the charity’s constitution, company law, by professional bodies and by the Council of Management.
  • Review the financial controls and ensure that these are monitored and reviewed regularly by the Officers Group.
  • Provide oversight to the Finance Manager with the compilation of year-end financial statements and accounts.
  • Support the CEO and Finance Manager in the ongoing financial management of the charity and attend Officers Group meetings, which are at least bi-monthly.
  • Report to the Council of Management quarterly on the financial results and position of the charity, and identify and bring to the attention of the board any financial risks facing the charity.
  • Ensure that the charity’s financial resources are sufficient to meet the charity’s current and future needs, advise the board on the reserves policy, and ensure that this policy is reviewed and monitored regularly and that surplus funds are invested carefully with a market return.
  • Oversee the accounting for restricted funds and ensure that funding received for specific purposes is separately accounted for and spent for the purposes for which it was given.

In partnership with the Chair, Chief Executive and Finance Manager:

  • Ensure that the Council of Management fulfils its duties and responsibilities for the proper financial governance of the charity.
  • Ensure that the income and property of the charity is applied for the purposes set out in its governing document and for no other purpose, and with complete fairness between persons who are properly qualified to benefit.
  • Advise the Council of Management on the financial implications and operational risk arising from board decisions, especially the board’s strategic and policy decisions.
  • Work with the Chief Executive and Finance Manager to ensure that financial information is both accurate and presented in a way that facilitates good financial governance.

Terms 

Appointment: The Treasurer will be appointed by the Council of Management, and also elected as a trustee/director by the Annual General Meeting for a three-year term, and is eligible for reappointment for one additional term. 

Remuneration: The role of Treasurer is not accompanied by any financial remuneration, although travel and other reasonable expenses may be claimed.

Location: Church Action on Poverty’s office is located in Salford, Greater Manchester, but the Treasurer can live anywhere within the UK. 

Time commitment: Four board meetings per year: two Saturday mornings online, and two in-person day meetings in Manchester (one Saturday and one weekday).  In addition there are at least five online meetings of the Officers Group. The Treasurer is also expected to have regular meetings with the Finance Manager. Overall time commitment in the region of one day per month.

If you would like to apply for this role or request an informal conversation, please contact one of our team:

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Speaking Truth to Power: A Reflection on the Dignity for All Conference 

Dr Joseph Forde reflects on the Dignity for All conferences and what was discussed during the Speaking Truth to Power workshop.

Dignity for All Conference

I attended the ‘Dignity for All’ conference held in Leeds on 10th June 2023, and, in one of the workshops, I was fortunate to participate in a stimulating discussion on the topic: ‘Speaking Truth to Power’. Jesus spoke truth to power, not least when he entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. As followers of Jesus, Christians are called to speak truth to power ― especially when too many people are struggling to make ends meet across the UK. But what does it mean in practice? A key theme of the discussion was how Church Action on Poverty places an emphasis on supporting more experts by experience (that is, people who understand poverty because they have lived it) to speak truth to power. For example, we got to learn how Church Action on Poverty’s Poverty Media Unit can train experts by experience to speak confidently and powerfully to the media and politicians. They become effective campaigners and spokespeople, and can inspire others to take action. The Poverty Media Unit also produces podcasts which show some inspiring examples of experts by experience speaking truth to power, and these can be downloaded from their website for wider dissemination and use by local branches of Church Action on Poverty, as well as by churches and other charitable organisations that are engaged in training those living at the margins to speak truth to power. 

I shared with the workshop how another innovative way of speaking truth to power has been the emergence of ‘Food Glorious Food’ in Sheffield: the first food bank choir in the UK. It brings together people who have used or volunteered in food banks, building community through music. I recounted how I had been fortunate to attend an inspirational performance by them at Sheffield Cathedral, for the launch of the End Hunger UK campaign in 2019. Choir leader Yo Tozer-Loft had said: ‘People were really motivated by the chance to lobby their MPs about food poverty. Even people who didn’t think they were singers said: “I want to raise my voice somehow”. Of course, we know that music has often been connected with protests by those who have been experiencing social injustices, marginalisation, poverty, exclusion or exploitation, and has been seen to be a great way of speaking truth to power. Think of how blues music emerged in America in the late 19th Century as an authentic form of protest by black cotton workers (and later by others). Think also of how British folk songs have often expressed the struggles by workers for better terms and conditions from their employers, and a more just society in which to bring up their children. Music will always be an effective way of speaking truth to power, and protest songs sung by Christians are one way of doing precisely that ― not least when out campaigning against social injustices caused by poverty.

 

Food Glorious Food Chior

Empowering those at the margins to speak truth to power confidently and effectively remains a central aim of Church Action on Poverty.  But one can also speak truth to power as an advocate for those experiencing poverty who may not able to do it themselves. Christian writers have a long history of doing this, often with impressive results. Examples are the seminal work published in 1931 by R H Tawney, Equality, in which he argues powerfully for a more egalitarian society to the one in interwar Britain, as a means of reducing poverty and improving the life chances of working-class men and women. Another, is the ground-breaking work of 1942 by Archbishop William Temple, Christianity and Social Order, which was, in part, a critique of interwar poverty and its causes in Britain, and was pivotal in shaping the post-war Welfare State settlement. The autobiography of 1958 by Revd Dr Martin Luther King, Stride Toward Freedom, is a third example, with its memorable account of the Montgomery bus boycott of 1956-58, that set the scene for so much that followed in the struggle for equality and opportunity for blacks in America in the late 1950s and 1960s. These three authors shared a view that the radicalism of Jesus’s ministry merits nothing less from us when it comes to striving for social justice.

Scripture, tradition and the human capacity to reason have played a large part in shaping Christianity, and no doubt will continue to in the decades to follow. However, in the last half-century or so there has been a trend within academic Judeo-Christian theology to explore whether experience might also play an important part in the development of theological insight. By listening out for God’s voice in others, it is argued we can learn much about God that the more traditional theological methodologies can’t as easily reveal to us. The technical term for this approach is contextual theology, and a key methodological requirement for conducting research in contextual theology, is the ability to listen attentively. Often, this will entail adopting an approach to pastoral or academic encounter that arises from, and is shaped by, the lived experience of others, especially those living at the margins ― seeing Christ in their faces, seeing the cross where they stand, and thus letting God speak through them. This approach to doing theology thus lends itself to supporting the goal of enabling people living in poverty to speak truth to power. It respects their insights, their expertise, their wisdom, their overall perspective on things, and puts them at the centre of campaigns for reducing poverty and the social exclusion that goes with it.   

In summary: when it comes to tackling poverty and its causes, then, it is the voices of experts by experience that need to be heard loudest, as they are the most authentic voices in the room, although, of course, they are not the only voices in the room that need to be listened to. Care professionals, volunteers, politicians, economists, academics and the clergy (this is not an all-inclusive list) also have voices that are relevant to finding solutions to poverty and its causes. However, in my view, they should never become disengaged from ― or disrespectful of ― those who are experiencing poverty first hand. This is also the view of Church Action on Poverty, and was a key theme at the ‘Dignity for All’ conference. 

Dr Joseph Forde is Chair of Church Action on Poverty, Sheffield. He researches and writes on welfare and Christianity, and is author of Before and Beyond the ‘Big Society’: John Milbank and the Church of England’s Approach to Welfare (James Clarke & Co, 2022).

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