CEO recruitment Q&A

We hosted a drop-in Q&A via Zoom on 25th July for potential applicants for the CEO role. Here is a summary of the main questions and answers.

1. What is Oxford Hub’s strategy?

Oxford Hub was started by a group of University of Oxford students in 2007 to encourage student volunteering, and its success led to the Student Hubs charity being set up. Oxford Hub became its own charity in 2018 to focus on place-based work, community projects as well as involving more residents in our volunteering programmes. You can read more about our history here: https://www.oxfordhub.org/history

Through the pandemic, Oxford Hub was focused on coordinating Oxford Together, which helped 5000+ people come forward to help their neighbours as street champions, offering practical support and building friendships in communities.

Coming out of the pandemic, it felt like the right time for a new strategy for Oxford Hub, building on everything we’ve learnt about exploring ways of enabling people to connect with and support their neighbours and communities, from peer-to-peer approaches to social prescribing, to build a healthier, more resilient and equal city.

So over the last year we’ve worked with more than 100 Oxford residents to work out what’s unique about Oxford Hub and our role in Oxford, what the emerging needs are for the communities we work with, and how we can work together to make the greatest difference with ambition, purpose and focus.

In the last year, Oxford Hub’s growth has included opening a community ideas hub in The Leys, in South East Oxford, which is where most of our work is now anchored. Our increased importance in focusing particularly in parts of Oxford where the need and opportunity to make a difference is greatest is now clear in our strategy.

You can read our 3 year strategy here (it will be updated on our website soon).

The new CEO will be key in leading our team in delivering this new strategy, and adapting it over time to be most impactful in the spirit of our continual learning culture at Oxford Hub.

2. What does the CEO role look like day-to-day?

What are the key challenges the CEO will be tackling day to day? What does the current CEO spend most of their time doing?

It varies hugely week-to-week and depends on what is going on internally in the organisation and what is going on externally in the organisation (our work varies seasonally around school and university terms).

For the current CEO, there are four main areas which are outlined in detail in the job application pack.

Outside of the day-to-day, the main challenges and opportunities for the CEO are similar to those at any small community charity; thinking strategically about, and finding funding opportunities, developing a high-performing team and culture, being the designated safeguarding lead to support staff and families we work with, and most importantly helping our programmes and projects think big and continually learn about our impact.

This role is an in-person role, and most of our team work at our community ideas hub in the Leys. The CEO will be based there at least a few days a week. We use our office in central Oxford (Jericho) when it’s most useful for city-wide projects and events. There is very limited work from home — the current CEO generally spends a few hours a week WFH for focused work on finance and admin — because we are a place-based organisation so our work is most impactful in-person.

3. How does decision-making work between board governance and operational leadership?

We have a clear Scheme of Delegation in place which the board and CEO use to work effectively. The governance of the organisation is led by trustees, informed and advised by the CEO and other senior managers, with decisions about policies, major new partnerships, budgets and fundraising overseen and decided on by trustees; whether at full-board meetings or sub-committees (finance, fundraising, impact). There are 6 board meetings a year, and sub-committee meetings are quarterly, all in the evenings.

The CEO has delegated responsibility for the day-to-day running of the organisation, and can delegate responsibilities to senior managers within specified areas. There is a great balance of high trust and a lot of support from the board for the CEO and management. The Chair is the CEO’s line manager.

The board is in a good place, with eight trustees, and no trustees have terms ending in the next year.

4. What is the importance of partnerships and power-sharing?

All our work is done in partnership, with local organisations and community groups, and with our volunteers. It’s an important principle to our work that we believe makes it stronger.

Two examples of power sharing at Oxford Hub:

1. Our Participatory Grantmaking programme, The Blackbird Leys Community Fund, is a fund for members of the community who have an idea to improve the lives, health and wellbeing of future Leys residents. Local residents receive the funding and local residents make the decisions about the fund. Decisions about who is funded and how much they receive are made by a community panel themselves, shifting power to those who know the community best. In the last 3 years, almost £100,000 of local projects have been funded through this programme including for Oxford Clothes Hub, BLAP, OACMA, Oxford Play Association, Blackbirds, Be Empowered and dozens more.
2. When we moved into our community ideas hub in the Leys, we were thoughtful about how we could share responsibility about the space. Although we are the tenants of the space — we have signed the lease, have responsibility for insurance, H&S, safeguarding, day-to-day running etc., we wanted to share power with residents and community groups for how we planned the schedule and what to prioritise so that it’s a shared projects. The Windale Steering Group now meets monthly and involves representatives from the School Council (we are on the site of Windale Primary School), a parish councillor, local residents, community groups and a few Oxford Hub staff members to represent the people we work with.

5. What is the size of the organisation? Paid and volunteer?

You can see our finances on the Charity Commission website: https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search/-/charity-details/5129761/charity-overview

And you can see our staff team and board here: https://www.oxfordhub.org/join-the-team

Last year, we had about 350 volunteers across our programmes and projects, from Schools Plus tutors, to Big Brother Big Sisters mentors, volunteers at our community hub, student volunteers helping at community projects and events, and much more! Oxford Hub has a strong history of volunteering and our volunteers are critical for our collective impact.

6. What start date would you be looking at for the successful candidate?

The current CEO will be leaving at the start of November, and we anticipate making an offer to the successful candidate/s by the end of September. This might mean we have short interim arrangements in place before the new CEO joins but we are looking for someone to start as soon as possible.