Each November, Trustees’ Week highlights the important role of charity trustees, offering a great opportunity to access information and free events for those looking to find out more.
Helping a charity in a more strategic role as trustee can be a hugely rewarding experience. There are responsibilities as well as benefits to consider, and here are my 10 top tips for aspiring first-time trustees to help you do your due diligence before saying yes to a trustee role. It’s always best to go in with your eyes open.
For charities in England and Wales, check out the charity’s entry on the Charity Commission website, by using the “Find a charity” search function. For those in Scotland, the OSCR website is the one to check. Are there any red flags for overdue annual accounts and annual returns? It is not unusual to find red entries for 2020/2021, when many charities struggled to complete their accounts in the usual timeframe due to the pandemic and associated lockdowns. For any red flags outside that period, it is worth asking the charity about the background to those late filing episodes, shown in red on the regulator’s website.
This one matters for your personal liability as a trustee. There is less to worry about, if the charity is a company limited by guarantee or a charitable incorporated organisation (CIO – or SCIO in Scotland). That’s because a modern corporate structure means the charity’s assets are held in the name of the charity, and not the names of the trustees. Where a charity is an unincorporated association or a trust, there is no separation of that kind, which could lead to personal liability for trustees where something goes wrong.
Understanding the time commitment involved in a trustee role is important. Many charities have sub-committees eg. a finance committee, where more detailed work is done on behalf of the board of trustees. If you are also likely to join a sub-committee, it’s worth having a complete picture of the number of meetings a year.
Sometimes a trustee recruitment advert will mention the reason for the vacancy eg. as one or more trustees reach the end of their tenure. What you are looking out for here is a scenario where a group of trustees has resigned, which might point to relationship difficulties on the board. You want to know what you are walking into!
Is the charity close to running out of money? Use the websites of the charity regulators to access the annual accounts to check out the balance sheet of the charity. You might also need to look at the Companies House website, depending on the legal structure of the charity. These searches are all free online.
This might be a potential red flag, if the founder of the charity is also a trustee, and might have been a trustee for many years. Founders are understandably passionate about the charity they helped to set-up. This can impact their judgement, however, and might on occasion prevent them from being able to value the input of fellow trustees who are putting forward a more detached analysis on certain matters. You want to make sure you are not joining a board where trustees are simply expected to say yes to a strong founder who is still around.
This one is a key determining factor for whether a particular trustee role is a good ‘fit’ for you. Find out what time of day meetings are held, and what day of the week, to see if this is practical for you. Find out if the board meets online, in person, or with hybrid options. Many charities use online meetings for sub-committees for convenience, and favour in-person meetings for some board meetings, to enable positive relationships to be built among trustees – particularly important for new joiners.
It is a potential red flag if you find out that several other trustees have been on the board for more than a decade. A good governing document will have clear trustee tenure set out, which might involve a three or four year term which can be repeated for a second term. A board which has many members who have been in role for a decade or more will be a difficult one to join, since it’s likely that group has settled into a way of doing things which makes challenge or new ideas less welcome.
To give you an idea of the scale of the charity and how it delivers its work, it’s useful to know if the charity has employees or relies on volunteers to deliver its work.
As a final check to avoid surprises, check online for any news reports involving the charity.
I enjoyed my first charity trustee role and learned a huge amount from it. After three years, I stood down from the board, having helped the charity to complete two projects where my skills and experience were a particular match. It can take a little time to find a charity which is the right fit for you; and it can be rewarding to help a charity through volunteering your time in this more strategic way.
For more information about being a charity trustee, check out the Charity Commission 5-minute guides for support. This OSCR guidance will be a useful reference for trustees in Scotland.
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