115 Board of trustees volunteer roles

Do you have the skills, experience, and passion to help a UK-wide environmental charity tackle the nature emergency using the power of data?

Can you leverage your financial skills to ensure the charity maintains a strong financial foundation?

Would you be excited to join the board of trustees as we prepare for a full strategy refresh?

The National Biodiversity Network Trust (NBN Trust) is looking to recruit an individual to join our board of trustees. This individual will also fill the role of Chair of the board’s Finance and Audit Committee, playing a key role in leading strategic, non-executive oversight of robust financial management for the charity and ensuring that the board is able to meet its collective fiduciary duties. Candidates should have strong financial acumen and the ability to provide strategic and governance-level financial oversight.

About the NBN Trust: National Biodiversity Network Trust

Over the past 26 years, the NBN Trust has fundamentally changed how biodiversity evidence is shared and used in the UK. What began as a pioneering, but relatively small data resource - fewer than 15 million species records - has grown into a world leading national infrastructure. More than 385 million records are now openly available through the NBN Atlas, our data portal, which is one of the world’s largest publicly accessible sources of biodiversity data, and is relied upon by conservationists, researchers, and educators across the UK and beyond.

Becoming a Trustee

We’re passionate about making nature conservation accessible to everyone, and we encourage applications from people from all backgrounds, including those that are under-represented in the environmental field.

As a Trustee, you’ll play a key role in supporting the NBN Trust’s mission by offering strategic guidance, oversight and specialist insight. Trustees share collective responsibility for ensuring the charity is well-governed, financially sustainable and operating in line with its charitable objectives.

Trustees provide strategic direction, oversee performance and risk, and support the Chief Executive and staff team in achieving impact. While the role is non-executive, Trustees are expected to ask constructive questions, offer informed challenge, and act as ambassadors for the NBN Trust and its values.

You’ll play a key role in supporting the NBN Trust’s mission by offering strategic guidance, oversight and specialist insight.

Key Information

• Time Commitment: Approximately 12 - 14 days per year, including attendance at four Board meetings, Committee meetings, our annual conference and team workday as well as time for reading papers.
• As well as attending meetings of the board, Trustees are expected to sit on one of our committees. This post will sit on the Finance and Audit Committee serving as Chair of the committee.  
• Board meetings are usually held in person at an accessible venue in London, with an online joining option. Occasionally, board meetings are held fully online using MS Teams. Board meetings take place quarterly, four times a year, between 11am-3pm.
• Quarterly committee meetings are usually held online.
• Additionally, the Chair of Finance and Audit Committee will attend online planning meetings with key staff in advance of each Finance and Audit Committee meeting.
• Trustees are appointed for a three-year term, with the option to renew for one further term.
• Applicants must currently reside in the UK.
• All Trustee roles are voluntary, with reasonable expenses such as travel reimbursed by the Trust.

To apply for this role please submit a CV and covering letter addressing the criteria for the role described in the Person Specification. Please also provide email contact details for two referees (who will not be contacted without your consent).

Closing date for applications is 31 December with interviews to take place in January 2027.

If your skills and experience do not fully match the person specification for this role, but you have relevant experience in the charity sector—ideally conservation—we would still be pleased to hear from you. We are particularly interested in candidates with expertise in biodiversity, data governance and digital ways of working, or charity fundraising and communications. Please contact us through our website to discuss other Trustee opportunities.