Policy and Funding Working Group – Terms of Reference

Introduction

A Terms of reference document defines the purpose and structures of a project, committee, meeting, negotiation, or any similar collection of people who have agreed to work together to accomplish a shared goal. Terms of reference show how the object in question will be defined, developed, and verified.

This document details the terms of reference for the organisation and delivery of the working group for Policy and Funding, subsequently referred to as the “Policy and Funding working group”.

As a charity, the Society must fulfil its legal obligations in many areas including but not limited to: equality, diversity and inclusivity, financial regulation, working with volunteers, protecting reputation, liability insurance, cancellation insurance, GDPR. 

Many of these legal obligations feature in the organisation of this working group and the Society Trustees must take responsibility for certain decisions and actions while at the same time formally delegating the organisation and delivery to the working group committee. Final responsibility in all matters lies with the Society.

Where the term “the Society” is used, this refers to the Board of Trustees (as the elected representatives of the organisation) unless specified otherwise.

Term

This Terms of Reference is effective from 20/01/2026 .

Working Group Aim

The Policy and Funding working group is an extension of the Governance subgroup, and will work closely with the Governance subgroup in fulfilling its aims and objectives.

These include:

  • Provide advice and training for members of the community and external committees on RSE policy in engaging with funders and relevant organisations to advocate and lobby for the RSE community.
  • Generation and maintenance of a Policy and Funding strategy.
  • Support for collaboration between government, funders and employers (particularly universities and Principle Investigators). Create national policies aimed at improving standards of employment for RSEs in academia and industry around length of contract, career paths and pay standards by means of standard assessment criteria. This goal is also aligned with the Society’s Charitable Mission Statement: “…to support the creation of an academic career path for Research Software Engineers.”
  • Actively involving community members, including those with experience working with stakeholder and funders, in achieving the above goals and co-creating the Society’s strategy document with their involvement.

Delegation of responsibilities

This working group will act as an extension of the Governance sub group, as such operational responsibilities this working group has will also be delegated (on a project-by-project basis) to members of this working group.

Due to the potentially high impact work, the working group should seek approval from trustees (or appointed subset) before carrying out new initiatives that do not directly fall within the existing responsibilities delegated to the working group.

Reporting

The Society requests that one of the working group committee reports on progress at the monthly trustee meeting in the role of ‘WG Liaison’. This can be the same person each time or change as necessary depending on availability. The Society will create a folder on Google Drive for the working group’s documents and would expect to see regular meetings with notes and actions clearly defined.

For changes to any aspect of our outward facing policy or major changes to internal policy documents the trustees will be given final sign off.

Working Group Membership

The working group consists of the Policy and Funding Lead (or co-Leads) plus interested members of the RSE community. The existence of this group and possibility to join it will be advertised annually at the SocRSE AGM, Newsletter and Slack. It will also be initially advertised through the RSE Slack and newsletter. The working group will re-form with the start of a new trustee year and appointment of Policy and Funding lead. New non-trustee members can join throughout the year as appropriate. The Trustees (or appointed subset) will vote to approve new members who join throughout the year. With the end of the trustee year, i.e., at the next AGM, the membership in the working group ends, but interested and motivated community members can re-join the group under the new Policy and Funding lead.

Non-trustee working group members can express their interest in certain topics of the societies Policy and Funding strategy, and will discuss with the Policy and Funding lead how to best contribute. The Governance trustees may also define certain work packages that can easily be handed to working group members.

Working group members will be given access to relevant SocRSE documents as appropriate for their work.

The group will be listed under the working groups on the SocRSE website.

The working group will be limited initially up to 20 persons, although the working group can at any time take a vote (requiring a majority in favour) to expand/reduce this size as required.

Onboarding of WG members

The working group should ensure that an initial onboarding meeting takes place to cover the following (but not limited to) activities:

  • Introductions and icebreaker
  • Circulate this document and ask all to read it carefully
  • Ask each member to take the free (mandatory) online EDI training on https://elearning.acas.org.uk/
    • Bullying & Harassment
    • Discipline & Grievance
    • Equality & Diversity
  • Read the Organisation Code of Conduct
  • Read the Complaints and Grievances policy
  • Read (at least) the following sections of NCVO’s guidance on ‘Involving Volunteers’
    • Understanding volunteering
    • Recruiting and welcoming volunteers
    • Supporting and managing volunteers
    • Valuing and developing volunteers
  • Give access to volunteers in WordPress to the specific pieces of content they will be aiming to update.

Relevant Policies and Documents:

  • Code of Conduct for Trustees
  • RSE Society code of conduct
  • Rules and Etiquette for Responsible Corporate Engagement on our Web Platforms
  • Society Policy and Funding strategy (to-be-created)
    • The policy strategy is a strategic document, details of the document will be published to members prior to the AGM
    • Minor changes will be made by WG members 
    • Major changes will be voted by WG members and passed by the Trustees.

Codes of Conduct (CoC)

The Society has two Codes of Conduct currently in place: an event CoC and an organisation CoC (also known as the Trustee Code of Conduct). The event CoC covers the expected conduct at events and on any online forums and apps. The organisation CoC covers the expected conduct for the working group. Any changes to either document would need to be requested to the Society and approved by trustee vote. Members of this working group can be removed by the chair for failing to follow either CoC.

In the event of a working group project becoming inactive, that is loss of contact with project lead, non-attendance at working group meetings (3 consecutive meetings without apologies), the chair reserved the right to re-allocate or pause the project.