Information for Trustees

Here you will find information about being a member of the Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus committee, and therefore an SPC  Trustees. 

Trustees meet to progress Chorus business about six times a year, though decisions which may need to be taken between meetings are either taken by the relevant officers and/or approved by email.

There are a number of key documents that the Charity Commission expects Trustees to read and understand. For example you will need to sign a Trustee Declaration of Interest, which itself requires that you’ve read and understood the Essential Trustee Guide and the Conflict of Interest Guide. You will find links to these documents below.

There is also less crucial information that nonetheless will help you in your role as a Trustee. We have organised the key points of into a sort of priority list, and hope that you will find this useful. Links are to websites unless otherwise stated.

In addition to the Chorus website, we have a shared drive in Outlook which is where officers store all the documents needed to run the Chorus, eg Trustee and professional contact details, Marketing and Publicity documents, SPC stationery (letterheads, compliment slips etc), committee meeting papers etc.  

New Trustees need to ask our Webmaster to provide access to the shared drive, and to set up a sheffieldphil.org email address; this enables us to avoid sharing private emails on the website or in the weekly update.

Our Finance Officer needs to register each Trustee on the Charity Commission website, so once elected everyone needs to provide:

  1. Full name
  2. Home address including postcode
  3. Date of birth
  4. Signed Declaration of Interest

Do please talk to fellow Trustees, if anything is unclear.

You must

Read the Essential Trustee Guide
Read the Conflicts of Interest Guide
Sign and hand in the Trustee Declaration of Interest
Attend most committee meetings, preparing by reading the papers beforehand
Check the agenda before each meeting and declare any conflict of interest
You should

Look through the SPC Constitution
Read through the Chorus Rules
Read the SPC Equality Policy
Read the SPC Public Benefit Guidance
You could

Familiarise yourself with meetings by reading through the most recent minutes
Browse through the SPC website, including the Members Area
Look through the SPC Safeguarding Policy
Look through the SPC Risk Management Policy

The Foundation for Social Improvement has produced a series of short videos about what it means to be a Trustee, including information about the key responsibilities. You can view these videos at https://www.thefsi.org/essential-trustee-videos