TRustees

Why recruit people with lived experience to your board of trustees?

“Our main gap is understanding lived experience. Understanding the need we seek to meet as an organisation better than we do. Without this understanding we can make assumptions.”

You may have been thinking about the diversity of your trustee board. You want to make sure that as far as possible it represents the community, users and members of your organisation and includes people with different backgrounds and experiences. You know that this is essential for you to be more effective in your work.

You also want to reflect the interests of the communities you serve. Your board will certainly benefit from a diversity of perspectives and innovative ideas, and the lively debates that this will bring! But beyond this, you will make better decisions if you are informed by the knowledge, insights and understandings of people who have expertise through lived experience of the issues you work on.

Maybe you are excited about the idea of recruiting people with lived experience to your board, but also a bit daunted and wondering where to start. We know that some organisations have put off taking this step through concerns about ‘getting it right'. So, with these concerns in mind, we have put together some guidelines based on our own experience of being trustees with lived experience and on research we have carried out - with other Experts by Experience and organisations who have successfully recruited trustees with lived experience.