Job vacancies

Trustee

Can you help us build a new economy that works for people and planet?

We are seeking new trustees to join our board at the New Economics Foundation.

While long established, we are not a typical think tank. Since 1986, we have been leading progressive thought and action, bringing together economic, social and environmental policy. We research, develop and campaign for radical policy solutions that will transform the economy so it works for people and planet.

Our new chief executive, Danny Sriskandarajah, joins us from Oxfam in January 2024. We will shortly be conducting the search for our new chair after the recent passing of our much respected chair Lord Bob Kerslake. With these changes and a general election approaching it’s an exciting time to join our board, you will have opportunities to directly influence our strategic ambitions and shape our work for the post-election cycle.

To deliver our charitable objectives we have three key missions:

  • A New Social Settlement: ensuring we all have the basics for a decent quality of life.
  • A Green New Deal: cutting carbon emissions, boosting nature and creating good jobs.
  • Democratic Economy: giving us an equal stake in the places where we live and work.

We would like you to be interested in two or more of these areas. You can see more about what this means in practice at the links below.

As a charity, our board of trustees provide a critical part of our governance. In addition to oversight, scrutiny and providing strategic direction, our trustees also bring to NEF a breadth of skills, experience and knowledge. You need not have served on a charity board before, but you may have transferable skills in governance at organisation, programme or partnership level.

Our recent trustee skills audit identified some gaps so we want to recruit trustees with the following skills:

  • Knowledge of new economics in order to influence policy
  • Campaigning and mobilising for change
  • Communication, using digital, social, and traditional media channels

We want to enrich the diversity and ensure the effectiveness of our board and so we make use of positive action to select between candidates of equal merit as a way to address the gaps we have identified. We are genuinely keen to receive applications from people who identify as working class or have done so in the past, are from minoritised ethnic backgrounds; disabled people; people who identify as LGBT+; neurodivergent people; and people with experience of mental health problems.

Time commitment:

  • An average of a day a month for trustees
  • The board meets 4 times a year, meetings are mostly hybrid, we try to bring everyone together at our offices in London at least once a year. You will need time to prepare for each meeting.
  • The board also has several sub-committees who hold hybrid meetings 6 times a year, most trustees join at least one of these committees and/​or ad hoc task and finish groups.
  • Trustees serve a maximum of two terms of three years.

Timetable

  • Application deadline: 16th October 2023 at 9am
  • Interview dates, first round, virtual: week commencing 23rd October
  • Interview dates, second round: week commencing 6th November
  • Second round interviews will be in person at our London office, but we can offer online interviews to anyone with access or logistical difficulties.
  • Start date: We hope to make formal appointments at our board meeting on 29th November 2023, we are flexible on actual start dates where needed.

How to apply

To apply, please send us the following in MS Word (or equivalent) to recruitment@neweconomics.org

  • A supporting statement in no more than two sides of A4 explaining how you believe your skills and experience meet our needs as laid out in the section of the role description titled What are we looking for? Please give specific evidence for each area.
  • We’d also like a short CV and the details of two referees.
  • A completed equality and diversity monitoring form

If you would like to talk to a current trustee about the role before applying do let us know by contacting recruitment@neweconomics.org.

If this application process doesn’t support your needs and you would like to discuss alternate ways of applying, or additional support to apply, please contact us.

Useful links

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