Building your board of trustees
Over a third of charities experience difficulties in recruiting trustees. In fact, two thirds struggle to find trustees with the appropriate skills and often rely on word of mouth or recommendations to find new board members.
For a charity, careful consideration needs to go into how it approaches recruiting new trustees. Ask yourself; what are you looking for? What and how can you teach them? How will you go about attracting them to your charity? And crucially, how can you retain them?
Some charities may turn to their supporters and networks, even friends and colleagues of existing trustees when seeking new board members.
However, poor recruitment, induction, training and poor performance evaluation of trustees can lead to a lack of clarity about duties and responsibilities, and a failure to recognise where advice should be taken. It can also lead to vesting control in an inner circle instead of across the whole board. In essence, the board must be champion for its charity.
If you wish to build a happy board, there are five key questions to consider:
The recruitment process
Before you start recruiting, you need to prepare the ground and establish who is leading the recruitment process. By devising an action plan, it will help to ensure that you are acting in line with your governing documents. But you also need to ask whether the board and the organisation are prepared. Are you ready to welcome new people and their ideas?
As simple as it sounds, a pitfall for many charities is not agreeing what the vacancy is in writing. A pack of information for potential trustees must feature the role description including responsibilities. What also needs to be detailed is the time commitment expected of the new trustee.
Think about how to sell the role. Ask what motivated the current board members to join and to stay and analyse how this can replicated in your approach. Try to create a vacancy advert that reflects how you recruited these people. Think about where the people you would like to attract would be likely to see your advert – whether it's a local venue, specialist press, a volunteering website or elsewhere.
Recruiting new trustees is – or should be – a significant undertaking. But the long term rewards of a stronger board will make it a very worthwhile investment.
The induction
A thorough induction process is imperative. Induction programmes need not be lengthy or expensive, yet getting it right from the start will make your board more effective. It can act as the gateway for new trustees and also employees and volunteers. It will ensure the new trustee is up to speed with the new role, the charity, and of course, their legal responsibilities.
An induction can also provide evidence that the people in your charity have an awareness and understanding of key policies and procedures such as equal opportunities, health and safety, data protection and financial.
The induction pack is a crucial element throughout the hiring of a new trustee. It should include information on the role and responsibilities of a trustee, plus key internal documents such as a copy of your governing document, an overview of the charity, your strategic plan and objectives, organisational structure, a job description, and contact details of other trustees. Also amongst the contents of the induction pack should always be included the previous annual report and accounts along with the minutes from some of the most recent board meetings.
Post induction
Following the induction, a stringent mentoring programme will ensure trustees are bedded in suitably and will feel part of the charity's culture. By getting to know staff and other trustees, the new recruit will further their understanding of the charity which will also enhance their knowledge of the charity’s strengths and weaknesses.
A charity should have an annual training plan in place for new trustees. Providing up to date training is a key method of ensuring better financial and general governance by the trustees. A trustee training programme, which can vary from external courses to webinars to internal presentations, will ensure the trustee in question will understand and appreciate their core duties.
The board should also be constantly reviewed and this refreshment of the individuals at the helm will ensure the right balance on an ongoing basis for the charity. Too many charities leave succession planning until the last minute– the topic should be an ongoing discussion between the board. The needs of the board change over time and thus this creates a culture of "moving on" but, as a result, this ensures people who really do need to move on make way.
Why difficulties?
Regardless of shape and size, all charities tend to have difficulties recruiting trustees. Whilst smaller charities rely more on established contacts and local supporters, the larger, more recognisable charities tend to use funds to progress a thorough recruitment drive alongside advertising and marketing campaigns. This is why the previous financial crisis hit charities' recruitment capabilities hard.
However, it is down to the charity to ensure the application process is as straightforward as possible. A barrier which often prevents people becoming a trustee is a lack of knowledge about trustee vacancies and what trusteeship involves.
It is a well known fact that charities need to operate more like businesses to survive. Recruiting professionals with commercial experience can also help to turn things around for all charities, small or large. It is essential to search outside the boundaries of your charity's networks in order to attract a more diverse range of candidates and recruit the best talent available from this pool. Widening the search is always good practice, even in circumstances where there are strong existing members who may wish to take on the trustee role.
Good mixture
It is down to the charity to ensure they don’t simply recruit an individual just because their qualities replicate those of current board members. A good mixture of qualities and skills is vital.
The requirements of the board are constantly evolving therefore recruiting trustees is a process which is also changing rapidly. Finding someone who has the right skills and experience, a connection with your cause and enough free time to make a genuine contribution can be a daunting task.
Getting your board to agree on a structured and thorough approach to recruitment is one of the most effective ways to ensure that the long term governance of your charity is secure, efficient, well rounded and ready to take on whatever challenges lie ahead.
