Today marks the start of Trustees’ Week 2020. In a year which has been extremely challenging for many organisations, this week offers us the opportunity to pause and thank those who volunteer their time to lead charities.
Over the last six months, charities have seen income reduce and the way organisations deliver work change significantly. This is all whilst board meetings have become remote affairs with decisions even more time-sensitive.
Being a trustee always involves complex decisions, but 2020 has been unique in presenting tough challenges full of unknown unknowns. Never has there been more need for committed, skilled and diverse trustees.
As an organising partner, NCVO is therefore delighted to play a role in supporting the Trustees’ Week campaign. We want to say thank you to trustees, but we also want to offer support to help them govern in this challenging time.
What we’ve got planned for the week
We’ll be publishing blog posts during the week highlighting our activities and key governance resources. Sign up to hear from NCVO.
- Monday: We’re publishing a video recording talking you through using our governance wheel to carry out a board effectiveness review.
- Tuesday: We’ll host webinar with the Charity Governance Code steering group who will talk us through the current review of the code.
- Wednesday: We’re inviting NCVO members to a presentation and facilitated discussion on board dynamics and relationships. Last few places remaining – book now.
- Thursday: We welcome an online panel to discuss organisational resilience for trustees
- Friday: I’ll publish a blog sharing some reflections from these events and from the Trustees’ Week campaign as a whole.
Across Trustees’ Week, we’re also dropping the members login requirements so that all trustees can access our:
- written online guidance on good governance
- board basics section which contains a wide range a of templates and practical tools you need to implement good governance
- NCVO governance wheel board diagnostic tool and guidance on individual trustee review.
If you find these useful, then be sure to sign up for membership. Our membership is free to the smallest organisations.
Other Trustees’ Week activity
Our Trustees’ Week partners are also running lots of exciting events and activity which you can view on the Trustees’ Week website. This includes:
- The Charity Commission has published five new five minute guides which cover what they describe as the ‘core syllabus’ for trustees. They cover financial oversight, achieving charity’s purposes, good decision making, addressing conflicts of interest, what to file with the Commission and what support is available.
- A festival of trusteeship hosted by Getting on Board offers an ambitious programme with a whole range of session across the week. Covering topics on charity finance, induction, board diversity and attracting the right trustees.
- Trustees Unlimited are supporting the Trustee Diversity Panel to launch #InspireList. This is a new initiative to create a list of trustees from racial and ethnically diverse backgrounds who already serve as trustees across the UK in order to thank them and inspire others to follow. Find out more and nominate here.
- The Young Trustee movement are hosting free one hour workshops to champion diversity on boards.
- Pilotlight are hosting as discussion on governing in challenging times with Dawn Austwick (chief executive, The National Lottery Community Fund), Debra Allcock Tyler (chief executive, Directory of Social Change) and Vicky Browning (chief executive, ACEVO).
- The Small Charities Coalition has organised some practical events focused on topics such as recruiting trustees and diversity of boards. You can sign up and register here.
Launch of new e-learning training
We know that one of the challenges facing small charity’s and those with a limited budget is ensuring access to a high-quality induction for their trustees.
I’m therefore really delighted to announce that we’re planning the launch of our new trustee induction online module which will be hosted on the FSI website. This new e-Learning is intended to offer a self-guided and low-cost introduction to being a trustee. I’ll share more details on this as soon as its available and in next months governance roundup. So watch this space!
This e-Learning will complement our more in depth trustee training offered by our consulting team which is now being delivered on Zoom. These interactive sessions are split over two half days and offer an induction or refresher for board members.
These have been hugely popular and we continue to add new dates. To browse our governance courses and other sessions, visit our training pages.
Dan Francis is NCVO’s lead governance consultant. For more regular updates follow @mynameisdanfran or @NCVO on Twitter.
Dan is responsible for NCVO’s governance consultancy offer, focusing on governance reviews, board performance and trustee training. He joined NCVO from the National Union of Students (NUS) where, as a long standing consultant, he supported the organisational development of local students’ unions as charities. 
