Job title: Trustee – Queen Alexandra Charity, Birmingham
Salary: Unpaid
Hours: Voluntary, reasonable expenses paid
Main geographical location of role: Harborne, Birmingham B17 9TG
Closing date: 31 July 2026
Where do applicants need to apply (preferred option): governance@qac.ac.uk
Job Description
The opportunity
Queen Alexndra Charity, Birmingham (QAC) is pleased to offer you the chance to help ensure that the quality of our services (college, community services and supported living) is as it should be, or better. As a trustee, you can help ensure that our students and clients receive the best support possible, that we comply with requirements and that how we govern ourselves is the best that it can be.
The commitment
We appreciate that being a trustee would bring with it demands on your time and that this pressure can be a frequent reason for leaving. So, we want to be upfront and fair about a role that would need about 70 hours from you each year. This would be to
· attend three to four on-site meetings of the Board of Trustees
· attend three virtual meetings of at least one of our committees
· make three visits annually as a lead (link) trustee, seeing how things are ‘on the ground’ and reporting back
· attend an annual virtual appraisal
· preparing for all this, especially by reading papers, and
· completing safeguarding-related training (unless you are given exemption for equivalent training elsewhere).
All governance meetings are planned for three hours from 2.00pm, Mondays to Thursdays. But we do keep this under review in the light of the availability and preferences of trustees in post at the time.
What we are seeking
We seek interest from people who can digest sometimes large amounts of reading and challenge both the executive leadership, and governing colleagues, on whether we are performing as well as we should or could. So, as well as being analytical, applicants will need the necessary confidence to contribute during meetings and, sometimes, to defend their viewpoint. We welcome anyone with these skills but, right now, we especially need to add to our expertise in education (especially specialist further education), care, estate, property development and finance.
The Queen Alexandra Charity, Birmingham
In addition to community services and supported living for adults, we run the Queen Alexandra College with 480 specialist further education places for people who have a diverse range of abilities. Our ambitious development programme is getting underway with construction of a new therapies suite and plans to increase student numbers to 700. We have just started our strategic thinking about community services and supported living.
Please look us up on www.qac.ac.uk for more information.
Is this role right for you?
In this role, you can have a major impact as part of a rigorous, but friendly, team in a regional charity that has a national reach.
While we will consider applications from anyone who believes they can contribute to our continued success, we are keen to complement the lived experience of disability and business experience from outside specialist education with people who have professional experience inside it. You can be from any level in your experience and expertise generally, but we’d especially like to hear from more senior specialist education employees, for example, assistant principals and deputies for whom the role might support career ambitions. We’d also like to hear from principals and qualified advisers.
Get in touch
Please contact Paul Walker, our Director of Governance, with any initial queries. At that time, we can arrange a chat with other key people and/or a visit to us if that would be helpful. Telephone 07515 760020. Email governance@qac.ac.uk.