by Catherine Hine, CEO
This Volunteers’ Week, I wanted to take a moment to highlight and say a huge and personal thank you to an exceptional team of people whose skill and commitment steer the work of the Breastfeeding Network – our volunteer Board of Directors.
The role of Director- otherwise known as Trustees- is often overlooked. Yet this group are unpaid Non-Executive Directors, responsible -in law- for ensuring a charity is well-run and continually seeks to direct charitable resources to achieving maximum benefit to the public. This is a big ask in the best of times. In the current climate, being a charity trustee is certainly not for the faint hearted.
The current, well-documented combination of increased demand for services, drive to meet more complex needs from communities, often on reduced and less certain income, make for some difficult conversations and decisions. It’s essential to have a Board who work together at once being deeply committed to the charity’s mission, understanding its remit, with diverse and lived experience of its mission, relevant skills and experience in a wide range of areas of organisational life. To function effectively they must be willing to name and address significant- in some cases existential- risks and opportunities, always with the best interests of the charity at the fore.
In this, and without being overly sycophantic to my bosses (!), I can say with great confidence that BfN are incredibly fortunate. Not only are we privileged to have a Board of individuals with a wealth of relevant skills and a good diversity of lived experience, above all, they are unrelentingly dedicated to BfN’s mission of supporting women and families in their breastfeeding choices, throughout the UK. This is a board that at once, challenges and supports in equal measure. And there is a deep and unwavering commitment to ensuring our values are lived out both in everything we do- what we do and how we do it.
This leading team of volunteers set the tone for the whole of BfN. And it is no accident that our Board of Directors attracts this calibre of volunteer. Our Member Directors always make up 50% of the Board and Member Directors robustly prioritise skills, lived experience and values alignment in their appointment of Non-Member Directors.
This Volunteers’ Week is an important moment to stop and reflect on the contribution of all our volunteers at BfN. What they do, what they bring to us and what they make possible for the tens of thousands of families we support. I’d like to personally thank our volunteer Board and more than 900 volunteers (and counting), who make BfN the vibrant and values-driven network it is!