Business Planning
Business Planning
Roles and Responsibilities of Trustees – on demand video
This 35-minute on-demand video takes you through the 6 duties of Trustees as outlined in the Charity Commission’s Essential Trustee: what you need to know and what you need to do, which they state all Trustees should read.
Governance – Templates and Policies
These templates and samples found across the web provide a practical starting point for your group’s documents.
Trustees Role Description
The Trustee Recruitment Cycle from Reach Volunteering helps boards recruit Trustees. Providing information, tools and examples from real charities, they take you through the whole recruitment process. This excellent resource includes a sample Trustee Role description, which you can download here.
Top Tips for Good Charity Governance
Charity governance is an imperative. Failures of charity governance could lead to a loss of public trust, confidence and could ultimately lead to the forced closure of an organisation.
But what are the top tips for good governance? Let’s read what Geoffrey Hand has to say on the subject. Geoffrey is a charity governance consultant, offering support and training.
Your charity’s governing document matters.
Your governing document is both your charity’s Bible and its Highway Code. If your charity is doing something different, your charity trustees can be way off track before realising they have set a foot wrong. Check it out regularly, at least once a year, and stay legal
Adopt the Charity Trustee Governance code.
Trustees or Directors have specific responsibilities which they must undertake according to the organisation’s constitution and the relevant legislation. Adopting the Charity Governance Code helps you to practice Good Governance.
Ensure Charity Trustee Diversity
Diversity is not just about race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation, he states. Every charity trust board must have its Mr and Ms Grumpy to challenge the common ground and stimulate real debate.
Read more: Getting on Board produce a practical guide: Diversify your Charity’s Board
Insist on fixed trustees’ terms of office.
It’s your charity that matters, not a charity trustee’s feelings. A three-year term as a charity trustee, re-electable twice (nine years in all) is plenty. Less for the charity chair. Keep up the charity’s tempo with three years only, no repeats and no exceptions.
Adopt trustee appraisals.
Appraisals are an opportunity for your charity trustees, including your chair, to receive peer-to-peer feedback, to reflect on your successes and failures, to identify your training needs, and to detect any potential troubles ahead. Include your charity staff.
Read more: NCVO’s guide to conducting individual trustee performance reviews.
A dynamic charity strategy
Charities go forwards or backwards, they never stand still. Avoid charity stagnation by having a rolling three-year charity strategy, a yearly charity action plan and a month by month charity strategy step-review.
User friendly charity financial information
Insists that your Charity’s finances are presented in a format that you and your fellow trustees understand, a budget that reflects your charity’s strategy and reports that map your Charity’s progress. Test your treasurer’s mettle (and your own understanding) by asking how charities accounts differ from commercial accounts.
Beware the charity thief.
Believe me, even today there are still charities banking online with no dual approval and two signature charities with pre-signed blank cheques. Even the most respected charity trustees and indeed charity staff, are not immune to personal financial misfortune. And a few short steps to charity dishonesty. Charity fraud happens.
Read more: The Charity Commission’s Internal Finance Controls Checklist makes a great starting point to see how you are doing. They have also produced guidance on protecting your charity from fraud.
Accurate charity records
Transparency and accountability are today’s charity watchwords. Ensure your charity trustees meetings are accurately minuted. Create your own charity compliance checklist and charity governance calendar – two hallmarks of a well-run charity.
5 yearly charity governance reviews
Many changes occur in a charity over five years, some good and some not so good. Policies, practices and even governing documents become out of date; Roles and relationships of staff and trustees evolve differently. An external charity governance review brings objectivity, highlights areas of concern and identify strengths and opportunities to shape the charity for the future.
Further Guidance:
Good governance
Watch our short video that explains good governance.
You might also want to read our Top Tips for Good Charity Governance.
To ensure that you have a well-run, efficient organisation that complies with laws and regulations, and that sustains a good reputation whilst making a difference based on its targets it will need good governance.
Although a board of trustees are responsible for governance, they rely on employees, volunteers, advisors and other stakeholders.
A useful tool that helps charities and their trustees with their governance is called the Charity Governance Code. The code is also useful for not-for-profit organisations that deliver a public, community or social benefit but is not a legal requirement.
The code has the following set of principles.
- Organisational purpose
The board is clear about the charity’s aims and ensures that these are being delivered effectively and sustainably. Charities exist to fulfil their charitable purposes. Trustees have a responsibility to understand the environment in which the charity is operating and to lead the charity in fulfilling its purposes as effectively as possible with the resources available.
- Leadership
Every charity is led by an effective board that provides strategic leadership in line with the charity’s aims and values. Strong and effective leadership helps the charity adopt an appropriate strategy for effectively delivering its aims. It also sets the tone for the charity, including its vision, values, and reputation.
- Integrity
The board acts with integrity. It adopts values, applies ethical principles to decisions and creates a welcoming and supportive culture that helps achieve the charity’s purposes. The board is aware of the significance of the public’s confidence and trust in charities. It reflects the charity’s ethics and values in everything it does. Trustees undertake their duties with this in mind.
- Decision-making, risk and control
The board makes sure that its decision-making processes are informed, rigorous and timely, and that effective delegation, control and risk assessment, and management systems are set up and monitored. The board is ultimately responsible for the decisions and actions of the charity, but it cannot and should not do everything.
- Board effectiveness
The board works as an effective team, using the appropriate balance of skills, experience, backgrounds, and knowledge to make informed decisions. The board has a key impact on whether a charity thrives. The tone the board sets through its leadership, behaviour, culture and overall performance is critical to the charity’s success.
- Equality, diversity and inclusion
The board has a clear, agreed and effective approach to supporting equality, diversity and inclusion throughout the organisation and in its own practice. This approach supports good governance and the delivery of the organisation’s charitable purposes. Addressing equality, diversity and inclusion helps a board to make better decisions.
- Openness and accountability
The board leads the organisation in being transparent and accountable. The charity is open in its work unless there is good reason for it not to be. The public’s trust that a charity is delivering public benefit is fundamental to its reputation and success, and by extension, the success of the wider sector.
The code can be found at www.charitygovernancecode.org
What is leadership?
Watch our short video that explains how to be an effective leader. It covers the six essential features of a good leader and six skills recognised in the Social Leadership Capabilities Framework that can help leaders in social and ethical organisations.
To be an effective leader, you need to know the difference between management and leadership. There is considerable overlap between the two, but an organisation needs both. Inspiring leaders must be someone with management skills who can convert a vision into action. A manager would focus on planning, improving today, and organising the future.
A leader would focus on vision, shaping tomorrow, and creating the future. In a large organisation, the chief executive focuses on leadership. In a smaller organisation, leaders don’t have that luxury. The director may be dealing with strategy in the morning and reorganising office files in the afternoon.
Here are six essential features of a good leader.
- Building trust by being a role model for the organisation, but remembering trust is a two-way process.
- Demonstrating courage by taking firm action when necessary, making difficult or unpopular decisions.
- Challenging views when needed, but with a focus on improvement and encouraging individuals.
- Providing focus to a team and their priorities and striving towards the vision for the organisation.
- Communicating effectively by listening as well as talking.
- Consulting people before making decisions to gain commitment from the wider team and being clear about what they are asking.
Here are six skills recognised in the Social Leadership Capabilities Framework that can help leaders in social and ethical organisations.
- The Empowering Enabler who empowers others to take on new challenges and training.
- The focused strategist who continuously seeks organisational improvement for their people.
- The passionate advocate who is committed to the mission and their people.
- The generous collaborator who seeks to establish and grow collaborative partnerships and relationships.
- The courageous changemaker who drives change and is unafraid of taking risks in a responsible way.
- The inspirational communicator who relates to others with authenticity.
Leaders can use this framework to reflect and assess their current skills, identify leadership gaps and plan the personal and professional development for themselves and their team.
