New Board member needed for Shepherds
Bush Housing Group
Staying First is a charity and social enterprise and a part of Shepherds Bush Housing Group. We provide important services to our community including debt, welfare and housing advice and an adaptation service for older and vulnerable residents. Having recently obtained funding to secure our future we are now looking for new Board members to help us drive our refreshed business plan, which takes us in some new directions.
We are London’s largest furniture re-use organisation (we call this part of our business “Furnish”). We provide quality pre-owned furniture to our community through our shop and online. This has led to our being awarded West London Business’ Green Business of the Year 2013 and in 2017 Shepherds Bush Housing Group was named Community Investment Business of the Year, with the judges making special reference to Staying First’s contribution supporting the most vulnerable people in our society.
Our future strategy puts our furniture re-use operation at the heart of what we do – we are developing further retail outlets and increasing opportunities to recycle and re-use with the intention of increasing our surplus to allow us to support our other less lucrative, but essential, services to those in need.
Our core services are hugely important to us and we are experiencing increasing demand for our debt and welfare advice and adaptations – we need to grow these services too, building on our excellent reputation and results.
If you are interested in becoming a voluntary Board member of Staying First to help us through the next part of our journey then the skills we are looking for to complete our Board include:
- Retail or general business development in private or charity sectors
- Marketing, communications or social media experience
- Fundraising
- Understanding and/or direct experience of the current and developing health and social care landscape
- Finance – ideally a qualified accountant
- Change management experience
However if our organisation sounds of interest to you but your skills are different we’d still like to hear from you.
The time commitment would be equivalent to one meeting every two months plus time for reading papers and an annual strategy awayday. We offer a full induction to anyone taking up a position on our Board.
If you are interested in working with us please contact Pam Sedgwick, the Director of Staying First on pam.sedgwick@sbhg.co.uk or on 07862 295904 for a discussion.
