Being a MAYK Board Member
MAYK’s board are a group of individuals who offer their time to help guide and support the organisation. Our board are champions, critical friends, advice-givers and supporters. We always want our board to feel like they are connected, informed and appreciated. We try and make our board meetings friendly and efficient. We want board members to feel proud of MAYK.
The Basics
Board Meetings
We invite people to join the board who have the skills and experience to help us achieve our mission. To make a difference. We think all our board members are excellent in their field and may bring expertise that we don’t have or would like to develop.
We have quarterly meetings. We usually need about three hours to get through everything without feeling rushed. The meetings are usually in Bristol. It’s great if you can be at all the meetings. Sometimes people can’t be there in person, so we Skype them in. We need at least three board members present to be ‘quorate’ (i.e. the meeting can go ahead and we can make decisions).
We have an annual board away day, out of the office, somewhere nice. There is food and thinking time and a chance to look further ahead, and feed into our strategic thinking
We send out board papers before each meeting. We try and make sure you have plenty of time to read them before you arrive. These papers include an agenda, minutes of the last meeting and finance documents. We also send you a fundraising report, and a programme update from Kate and Matthew. Sometimes we also send you other documents we want you to look at or comment on. It’s great if you can spend some time reading these papers before the meeting. This helps you prepare any questions, and get your head around any important issues.
We recognise that everyone on our board have different strengths and expertise. Don’t worry if some of the documents don’t make sense, we talk through them all in the meeting.
There are no stupid questions! We welcome your feedback, challenges, ideas and thoughts. Anything that you want to bring up is valid. If you’d rather, you can email us in advance to ask questions or tell us something you'd like to talk about. We take minutes at each meeting, so we have a record of what we discuss.
MAYK’s Chair makes sure we get through everything in the meeting. The Chair and Vice-Chair take on more responsibility than other board members. They have more contact with us, and help make decisions that don't need the involvement of the full board. We also sometimes form sub-committees or working groups for specific things such as finance and fundraising or for a specific project.
Other useful information
Outside of the four board meetings, we may call on you for specific things. For example, being at events and shows or giving advice on a specific issue. We think we’ll have the best relationship if you are familiar with our work and if you come to our shows.
As part of being a board member, we also ask that you advocate for our work. This might include telling other people about what we do at events you go to, or chatting to individuals about our work.
Being a MAYK board member is a voluntary position. We pay travel expenses for people outside Bristol, and we will buy you a drink in the pub after our board meetings. Where board members are able to, we ask you to become a MAYK Friend, donating at least £5 per month to help support our work. Where appropriate, we may also ask you to introduce us to anyone you might know who could support our work too. We’re always looking to expand our networks.
As you’re giving your time for free, we try not to ask too much of you – we appreciate that everyone is very busy. If we ask you to do something and you feel like you can’t or don’t have time, then just let us know.
As a board, you might also decide that at times it’s important to seek external advice on a particular issue.
We expect you to tell us if things that you do outside of being a MAYK board member might conflict with what we do. An example of this could be if you are a producer working on a show that we programme. We also ask that you respect that some things we discuss might be confidential.
Our board members stay with us for three years. After that time, you may wish to step down, or be voted back onto the board. We do this at our Annual General Meeting, which happens every year as part of our regular July board meeting. If you wish to step down, we ask that you give as much notice as possible to help us plan for recruiting new members. At least three months’ notice would be great.
If for any reason it doesn’t work out and you’re unable to commit to fulfilling your duties, the board may ask you to step down.
The Legal Bit
If you’re a board member, you are a Company Director of MAYK Theatre CIC. This means that, together with the other board members, you have to make sure we are complying with:
company law
employment law
health and safety legislation
equal opportunities
laws around working with children and young people
In practice, this means that you will have the opportunity to read, comment on and sign off our policies. We will also let you know at board meetings (or in between if it's urgent) about any issues that arise.
You also have collective responsibility to make sure:
the company remains solvent
that we don’t do anything that might place our funds, assets (things we own, including ideas) or reputation at risk
For our Young Board Members programme, we would work together to figure out the right level of responsibility depending on your age.
MAYK’s Current Board
Anna Starkey (Chair)
Harsha Balasubramanian
Myles Jay-Linton
Julia Head
Adam Gallacher
Simon Thompson
Jon Dovey
Kate Yedigaroff
Matthew Austin