The Young Trustees Movement didn’t come up with the concept of young trustees. Young people on boards are trustees like the rest of the board. The reason why we talk about “Young Trustees” is to name a demographic that is currently lacking representation on boards and is so desperately needed.

Currently we know that the Charitable Trusts Act of 1853 established the Charity Commissioners for England and Wales and with it charities started to become more regulated.

We are not sure what the first ever board with young trustees was but it would be fun to find out!

There are however, lots of amazing boards operating right now with young trustees! There are too many to name but the British Youth Council is good example.

The Movement came out of a research project funded by The Blagrave Trust. The Social Change Agency led the research and incubated the movement.

Consultations were taken with young trustees from across the country to define our strategy. 10 young trustees were appointed Ambassadors to ensure the staff team were accountable to the strategy and allow for youth voice to be embedded in all of our work.

So the simple answer is that the movement was founded and created by its movement members.

The need for young trustees is not groundbreaking. Lots of organisations and people have been advocating for greater representations for decades. Our recruitment checklist has links to lots of great articles and research that has been done on young trustees, before the movement even launched. For example, the Young Trustees Guide.

Young Charity Trustees was founded in 2011 by Alex Swallow.  On October 9, 2019 Young Charity Trustees social media channels became part of  the Young Trustees Movement. We are thankful to Alex for creating a twitter platform with 11.9K followers and a 5K strong LinkedIn group. You can find out more about his decision to do this with his podcast with him here.

Just like how this movement was founded by its members, our future will also be decided by our members. If you are reading this, it means you care and therefore we need you to be part of our future.