Director - Volunteer

Two founding directors wanted for a brand-new CIC explaining health research and clinical trials, in plain language, to the communities rarely included in them. No board experience needed roots in those communities matter most. Shape an organisation from its very first board meeting. What difference will you make? These two appointments change what Counted Health CIC is able to do, immediately and directly. The practical impact comes first. National Lottery Awards for All, our most important early funding route, requires two unrelated directors before we can even apply. Your appointment unlocks an application worth up to £20,000, which would fund a year of free community sessions, translation into four community languages, and training stipends for our first local ambassadors. It is rare for a trustee role to have an effect this concrete joining the board is the step that makes our next stage fundable. The deeper impact is on trust, which is the whole organisation. Our promise to communities is that nobody can pay us to recruit them into studies and that we hold no data about anyone. Promises like that are only believable if someone independent enforces them. That is you. The independent directors approve every policy, every funded programme and every commercial term, and specifically approve or refuse any dealings with the founder's separate commercial company. When a community member asks "why should we believe you?", the honest answer includes "because our board makes it so." You would not be overseeing the mission from a distance; you would be the mechanism that makes the mission credible. And there is a founding-moment impact that never comes again. This board's first year sets the pattern how community members become company members with a real say, how we measure our work honestly and publish what fails, and how an organisation built by one person becomes one owned by the communities it serves. The medicines of the next decade will be tested on somebody. Whether our communities understand what they are being asked to join, and take part on their own terms, is the difference this role exists to make. What are we looking for? We are looking for people, not CVs, and two things matter far more than everything else. Lived experience of the communities health research misses. You are from, or deeply rooted in, an ethnic minority community, a low-income community, or the disabled community, and you know first-hand how the health system treats people like yours. This is the qualification. Our whole model is that the explaining must belong to the communities themselves, and that has to start in the boardroom. The willingness to challenge. Our independent directors exist to hold the founder to account, including saying no to him. We need people who ask the awkward question, read the thing properly before agreeing to it, and are comfortable being the voice in the room that says "hold on." You do not need board experience, governance knowledge, a health or science background, or any formal qualifications. First-time trustees are genuinely welcome we provide full induction, and we will support you into the role properly. Beyond those two essentials, any of the following would be useful to us, and none is required community organising or grassroots leadership; health, social care or public health; education or training; safeguarding; finance or bookkeeping; charity, CIC or public-sector governance; languages spoken in communities, especially Bengali or Sylheti, Urdu, Arabic, Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi or Somali. If you have read this far and recognise yourself, but something is making you hesitate ("I've never been on a board", "I'm not a professional"), please apply anyway. You are exactly who this advert is for. Remote What will you be doing? You would be one of two independent directors joining our founder on a three-person board, at the very beginning the company was registered in August 2026 and its first free community sessions run this autumn. These are founding seats. The people who take them will shape everything our first policies, our first funded programmes, and the standards we hold ourselves to. The board's job over the next year is concrete. Approve our safeguarding, expenses and conflict of interest policies. Oversee our first grant funding and sign off our small grants applications. Review the evidence from our pilot sessions and decide what changes. And govern our independence our founder also runs a separate commercial company in health research, and the independent directors approve or refuse any dealings between the two organisations. We designed the role this way deliberately. We need people willing to say no to the person who appointed them. There is a bigger job behind the yearly one. We are building towards a board where most seats belong to people from the communities we serve, and company membership is open to the local people we train and pay to run our sessions. As a founding director you would help design that how members get a real say, how community voices reach the boardroom, and how an organisation built by one person becomes one owned by many. The commitment is four evening board meetings a year, online or in person, plus reading and occasional decisions in between a few hours a month, arranged around work, family and prayer times. Full induction provided, and honoraria intended as we grow.