This week I’m running a ‘Making the Most of Your Board’ training session for charity leaders, so I’ve been thinking about governance. 

Governance is rarely a sexy or fashionable topic of conversation, but I think it’s critically important. If I had to choose the key factors that were likely to determine the success of an organisation, good governance and diverse leadership would definitely be in my top five. And, if I was running an organisation today and I wanted to improve our performance, relevance and impact then I’d look at ensuring my Board reflected the wider community we exist to serve, and that it functioned well. Both diversity and effectiveness of our Boards are important: in fact they are inter-dependent. 

So when I recently saw that the Charity Governance Code has recently been updated in terms of the Integrity Principle and EDI I was delighted. Diversity has to be at the heart of good governance, and for many organisations we have a long way to go to achieve governance that is both effective and more representative of our wider communities. 

I know from my own experience that bringing in a wider range of voices to decision-making can have really big benefits. When I worked as Assistant Director at mima we employed two apprentices from the local community who were half the age of many of the staff. Our Director Kate Brindley encouraged me to include them in steering groups for some of our trickiest projects. I’ll confess, initially, I wasn’t sure how useful these less experienced staff members would be – but I was wrong. Our apprentices had lived in the local area all their lives, unlike those of us who commuted into Middlesbrough. We didn’t have a Trustee Board (we were part of the Council) but hearing the apprentices’ voices around the decision-making table freshened up our thinking and challenged our assumptions.

On the other hand at the age of 47, I still find myself often the youngest person in a room of Trustees. And I suspect I’m also often in a minority having attended comprehensive school. Our boards are too often ‘male, pale and stale’; as was illustrated beautifully by Suzanne Alleyne in a brilliant talk at The Wild Conference 2019, in which she showed very starkly the homogeneity of the Boards and Executives of ACE NPOs in terms of colour.

Recently, whilst facilitating a Board strategy day for a client I was struck by the blindspots that emerge when a group that lacks diversity. On this occasion, a staff proposal around climate change was dismissed as ‘irrelevant’ by the Trustees. I found it shocking how anyone could not see climate change as relevant to a 10 year strategy. And I challenged the group, asking had there been anyone in the room under 40 the discussion might have been different.

I’d go as a far as to say unless your Board reflects the demographic profile of the community you serve you might want to flag this on your risk register.

So how can you improve Board effectiveness and diversity?

Below I’ve listed a few resource that can help:

The Governance Code  – is a great first step for understanding what good governance looks like – although I find the Governance Wheel (below) a more practical tool for assessing how well we are doing as Boards and what needs to change.

Governance Wheel –this my favourite diagnostic* to use with Boards as it defines success clearly and helps us understand what that looks like, as well as helping us understand our strengths and areas that need improvement. If you’ve not experienced great governance it’s not always obvious what good looks like. Lots of Trustees tell me they find the definitions in this tool really helpful. The tool is now only available to NCVO members, although any non-profit can join NCVO. 

Young Trustees Movement – is a non-profit focussed on how to increase involvement of under 30s in charity governance. I particularly like their recruitment checklist, and they also advertise opportunities for young trustees and offer training.

Governance Tomorrow – Clore Leadership are running a 3-day event in July exploring young trusteeship which looks great.

*yes, I realise how tragic this sounds (and I don’t care)