Make a Difference: Join our Board!
Do you work or volunteer in the heart of your community?
Want to make a difference to the VCSE sector across Stoke-on-Trent?
Want to use your skills and experience to help others?
We want to grow our board, and we want you to get involved!
Our Trustees
Our Trustees are incredibly important to us. They guide our work and support us in everything we do. Coming from various professions and backgrounds, with a wide range of skills and experience, our Trustees all have one thing in common: a passion for helping others.
If you also have a passion for people, and want to help improve the lives of those within communities across Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire, then why not do it from the VAST board?
About Us
Established in 1920, VAST has been supporting Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations for over a century, enabling them to provide the support and services their communities need.
Our work is shaped by the Four Functions of Local Infrastructure:
- Leadership and Advocacy: gathering the thoughts, needs, and experiences of the sector and local communities, bringing them to the attention of policy and decision makers; influencing conversations at a strategic level; representing and advocating for local voluntary sector organisations, diverse groups, and marginalised or hard to reach communities.
- Partnerships and Collaboration: creating accessible and inclusive opportunities and driving effective collaborative working through the building of networks and partnerships between local organisations and strategic partners.
- Capacity Building: providing practical support, guidance, information, advice, training, and essential business services to VCSE groups to enable them to become more resilient and efficient, to achieve their goals, improve lives and help communities to thrive.
- Volunteering: delivering tailored volunteering support to voluntary sector groups including training, guidance, and best practice; encouraging and nurturing high-quality, accessible, and inclusive volunteering opportunities; and a personalised volunteer matching service.
Being a VAST Trustee
Our Trustee Board meets four times a year, and there are plenty of opportunities to get involved with sub-committees, working groups, and other pieces of targeted work.
As a VAST Trustee, you’ll learn new skills, gain new experiences, and make new connections. You’ll get to work as part of a diverse team all working to govern and guide our charity, supporting our work across Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire, and helping drive positive change in communities across the area.
Who we’re looking for
Knowing what our sector needs and wants is incredibly important to us, and that’s why we’re looking for Trustees with VCSE knowledge and lived experience, especially those from within our membership.
More than that, we’re looking for people who care about their community and want to use their skills, experience, and connections to support the voluntary and community organisations emerging and already embedded within those communities.
If you have experience of strategic health work, health and care systems, and the local agendas and priorities then we’d love to hear from you too!
You don’t need any specific qualifications to be on our board, and you don’t need to have been a trustee before either. All you really need is a small amount of free time and the desire to make Stoke-on-Trent a better place for all.
Sound like something you want to get involved in?
If you like a challenge and want to make a difference, please complete this form. We’d love to hear from you!
For an informal chat about what being a VAST Trustee involves, please contact Charlotte Bennett, Strategic Projects Manager, on 01782 683030 or email charlotte.bennett@vast.org.uk.
To be considered as a future board member complete the expression of interest form by 12:00 pm on Friday 30th January 2026.
