With 2017 now in full swing, voluntary sector trustees up and down the country will be thinking about what their board could do better, and what they, as an individual trustee, can do differently.
Here are five resolutions to help make 2017’s board your best yet:
Challenge
This may seems obvious. But we know that too many boards are merely rubber-stamping the decisions of their executives without suitable scrutiny and challenge.
The voluntary sector has witnessed the press rail against it in 2016 and high-profile cases have thrust to centre stage the fact that too many charities still have poor governance. As a trustee, challenging decisions is one of your primary roles.
Do a skills audit
Getting the right skills on your board is vital for good governance, to ensure the team can fulfil its primary commitment – to challenge.
Having the right brains around the table to navigate your charity through its challenges and opportunities over the coming year is critical and a skills audit will help you identify the gaps. When scoping the landscape, remind yourself of who is due to step down and when. You don’t want to end up without finance expertise because your forgot your treasurer was due to stand down in the next year. Essentially, you need to analyse the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the skills on your board.
Evaluate your board
Trustees should not be afraid to evaluate each other and themselves to ensure their board is fit for purpose. It sets a powerful precedent when boards hold the mirror up to themselves to evaluate their effectiveness.
This means a top-to-tail review of the people, processes, papers, timetabling, committee use and executive involvement. And on an individual level this is also a good time to consider your own contribution to the board.
Are you just coasting? Perhaps it’s time for you to lend your skills elsewhere and allow your seat around the table to be filled by someone else who can contribute in a different way. Knowing when to step down from a board is critical to that board’s survival. Lame duck trustees are a nuisance.
Commit to diversity
Diversity and having the right skills mix go hand in hand. More diverse decision-making is better decision-making. When you have completed your board evaluation you may notice there are parts of the process that are preventing participation from those you are trying to attract. As a sector we champion diversity – but our boards do not show that in practice.
Ensure your own staff are also trustees
Ensure you encourage staff at your organisation to put themselves forward to be trustees at other organisations. When the fundraising crisis hit, the relationship between boards and fundraisers was, rightfully, called into question. One of the easiest fixes of this was to encourage fundraisers to join boards.
We ask businesses to release staff to be trustees but less often release our staff to be trustees, even though it provides great professional development and their own opportunity to “give back”.
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