I've founded a small community project which I manage, and have a number of volunteers working with me. I've been given small sums of money from a couple of trusts over the past few years to give me the equivalent of a 1-day a week income to do this. I've received this money as a self-employed person, invoicing for project start-up consultancy costs.

I'm now bringing would-be trustees together as we think about transitioning to becoming a CIO so we can start to fundraise properly. Part of me feels I would be better suited to joining them as a trustee than becoming an eventual paid CEO. Since none of them have experience in being trustees before, I imagine they will look to me from a lot of guidance anyway in the early stages and they definitely see me as holder of the vision.

Two questions:

Could I  become a trustee but also carry on project managing until such a time as we can actually employ someone to be the CEO? And could I still get paid some consultancy money for this, still as a self-employed person? (I ask because this all feels rather chicken and egg. I can't see anyone else putting in the time I do unless they're employed to do it as CEO. But before we can raise the funds to employ someone and have the structures to do it, we need to register as a charity and get the money together, etc. And that won't happen overnight. Until then I can't do everything I'm doing for free, and I recognise that our volunteers don't have the time.

Just to be clear, I don't want to simultaneously be CEO and trustee as I'm aware of the conflict here. I just need to make sure that a) I can pay the bills with all the work I'm putting in until we can get a CEO and b) the work won't grind to a halt which it would right now if I opted out of hands-on management.

I appreciate any thoughts.