Overview
Trustees have control over, and legal responsibility for, a charity's management and administration. They are, in many ways, similar to Directors of a company or Governors of a school.
The main legal duties of a trustee are:
- To ensure that the charity is fulfilling its stated aims for the public benefit
- To ensure that the charity complies with its constitution and the law
- To act in the charity's best interests
- To manage the charity's resources responsibly
- To act with reasonable skill and care
- To ensure that the charity is accountable to its members
To be eligible as a trustee you must be at least 16 years of age and not otherwise disqualified under the Charities Act.
The Charity Commission provide further detail on the responsibilities of trustees and the circumstances which might lead to disqualification in their Essential Trustee document.
Election of Trustees
The UKPA constitution allows for up to six elected Trustees. At each AGM, one third of those must retire (longest serving first or by lot if tied) and any vacant positions must be must be open for election.
There are currently four of those postions filled (Tania Allard, Owen Campbell, Kristian Glass and Cecilia Liao), and thus two vacancies. Owen Campbell is the longest serving trustee and therefore obliged to resign, giving a total of three vacant positions available for election.
If you would like to put your name forward for election, please write to the trustees (trustees@uk.python.org) before 30th August 2019 and include a short description of yourself for inclusion below.
The current candidates for election are:
Owen Campbell
I'm a founding trustee of the UKPA, was instrumental in its incorporation and have served as a trustee since that point. I'm keen to see the organisation succeed, to make the most of the opportunities available to a registered charity, to broaden its scope beyond the annual conference, to be utterly transparent and accountable to its members and to be a driving force of the UK Python community.
I'm also the Programme Director for the 2019 conference and have been part of the organisers' team since 2016.
Vincent Knight
David Spademan