Welcome
Welcome from the Chair and Vice-Chair.
On behalf of the Board, we thank you for your interest in the governance leadership roles at the Smallwood Trust.
Since 2016, Smallwood has moved through a period of focused transformation to become a specialist and effective grant-maker, awarding £26 million to further our mission of enabling women to be financially resilient and reducing gendered poverty. This funding has supported more than 150,000 women through our programmes. Smallwood has made a significant contribution in the following ways:
Invested in longer-term change initiatives to challenge systems and processes that keep women in poverty
Improved outcomes for women most at risk of poverty and destitution, enabling them to avoid extreme poverty through individual grants and wrap-around support delivered by our community grant partnerships
Safeguarded and saved critical frontline jobs and services improving financial resilience for women who would otherwise have no or little support and enabling our grant partners to meet increasing and overwhelming demand
After a period of strategic review, we are planning for Board leadership succession to help guide Smallwood through our next chapter, working with the executive team to shape our approach and support them to deliver our strategy. We remain focused on ensuring our funding is effective, relevant and sustainable for our grant partners and the women they support.
As part of this, we recently undertook a governance review and managed a transition that sets the foundation for our next phase. In this first wave of Board recruitment, we are prioritising the appointment of a new Chair, and we are genuinely open-minded about the structure this may take. We welcome expressions of interest from individuals who may wish to serve as Chair, Co-Chair or Vice Chair, and we invite you to speak directly with our search partners at Prospectus about your preferred mode of engagement with our Board.
Alongside this, we are also recruiting a new Chair of the Finance Audit and Risk Committee, with further Director appointments planned for later in the year.
The work ahead will be significant, but so is our commitment to it. As always, we will move forward by learning, sharing, and adapting—staying true to our purpose of enabling women to be financially resilient.
After more than 9 years, myself and the Vice-Chair, Maureen Margrie, will be stepping away from our existing Board leadership roles, though we will remain as Directors until the end of our terms to support our evolution.
We are keen to speak to candidates from diverse backgrounds with a range of skills, experiences and perspectives and you will find more information about the roles in this microsite.
Prospectus is proudly supporting us in leading the search for these important roles. However, if it would be helpful, members of the Board are also available for informal, exploratory conversations ahead of making an application.
We very much welcome applications from individuals who wish to play their part with us in driving change to improve social and economic outcomes for women and we look forward to hearing from you.
D’Arcy Myers, Chair
Maureen Margrie, Vice-Chair
