We are launching a charity governance consultation to investigate how the sector could change, develop and improve charity boards and the nature of trusteeship. How do chairs, trustees, and CEOs want charity boards to be different in 5 or 10 years’ time?
A chair can only be an effective leader if they have an effective board
It is increasingly clear that no chair is an island. A chair can only be an effective leader if they have an effective board. What do we need to do to make boards more effective?
At the Association of Chairs, we can’t make boards more effective on our own, so we need to ask chairs, trustees and organisations for their views.
The final output of this consultation will be a strategy, collectively held and implemented, by us and a number of other bodies – as well as chairs and trustees across the UK.
Topics included in our charity governance consultation
Some of the areas the consultation covers:
- How do we make trustees more representative of UK society as a whole?
- How do we help trustees find the time, or afford, to be trustees?
- Do we want to develop more of a learning and training culture among trustees?
- Would it be useful to have a clear set of personal standards by which we think that trustees should act?
- Would it be useful to have an agreed way of measuring the performance of charity boards?
- And lastly, how we can make the support and support services for trustees more comprehensive and powerful?
People may not have views on all these areas, but we hope that the responses will give us some clarity on how to approach an agreed set of plans and priorities. While the specifics of the ideas are about charities, there is lots of stuff that is relevant to other types of non-profit organisations, so please do have a look at the consultation.
How to get involved
The heart of the consultation is the online response form here.
It will take you through all the questions and issues we are posing and give you a chance to put your views both in answers to specific questions and also in a free text way. Our goal is 500 responses: please help us to spread the word.
Further information
There is a longer document setting out the ideas in more detail. Click here to access the information document. We hope this will give you a better idea of where we are coming from, but you don’t have to read it to complete the consultation.
We will also be holding a webinar for Association of Chairs members on 27th February. Click here to book your place.
And if you’d prefer a one-on-one chat with our chair Joe Saxton, drop an email to [email protected].
