Trustee Standards in
Trustee Standards in
Trustee Standards in
Standards
in Practice
A Guide for Smaller
Organisations
The Governance Hub is a partnership of eight organisations that provide support to the
voluntary and community sector: Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations
(acevo), the Black Training and Enterprise Group (BTEG),The British Association of
Settlements and Social Action Centres (bassac), Charity Trustee Networks (CTN), East
Cornwall Council for Voluntary Services (ECCVS), the National Association for Voluntary and
Community Action (NACVA), the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) and
Volunteering England.
The Governance Hub is one of six national Hubs of expertise, developed as part of the
ChangeUp programme to build capacity and improve the infrastructure of the voluntary and
community sector. The other five Hubs are concerned with: Finance, ICT, Performance,
Volunteering and Workforce. The Hubs are funded by Capacity Builders.
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1. Starting point 8
5. Assembling the right team to walk the course – assessing your skills 10
10. Measuring how far there is still to travel – assessing the board’s 13
performance
Travelling further 14
Useful resources 15
Safeguard and promote the values and Determine the structure and strategy of the
mission of the organisation organisation
Ensure the organisation operates in an Ensure the effective functioning of the board
effective, responsible and accountable
manner
1. Starting point
Know yourself: It can be daunting knowing which route to choose. Before you start
travelling, you need to work out where you are starting from. If you are new to the
Standards, start exploring on a small scale. Those with more experience can be wide-ranging
in applying them and could take a more strategic approach.
Starting on a small scale: Use the Standards at individual or team level to support personal
development. This helps to familiarise you with the language and structure and understand
how they may benefit your work. You can use them to identify your competences and areas
for development. It helps if you have someone with whom you can compare your self-
assessment in the light of the Standards, review the progress you are making and identify
further support to help you develop your skills.
Pack your bag: Good planning is essential to using the Standards effectively. Whether as an
individual or as a board or committee, you need to spend some time thinking about how to
introduce them. Make sure you have the right equipment for your journey. Think about what
you are presenting and how. Think about how you will record points that emerge from your
discussion: should you minute the discussion or should you use flipcharts that get written up
afterwards?
Using the Standards with the entire board: Work out how to encourage the board to
begin using the Standards. You could ask the Chair for 20 minutes’ time on the next agenda,
and prepare a brief introduction and proposals.
Be prepared: Get copies of the pocket version of the Standards for all the board members.
Make sure you know what else will be needed for any of the proposals you make.
Using the Standards as an individual: Set aside time to read the Standards and reflect on
your own experience as a trustee. Make your own notes of the questions you have and any
actions you intend to take. Find out who else is using the Standards, either on your board or
ask around any contacts you might have in other organisations, and explore whether a chat or
an exchange of e-mails might help you both make progress.
Next steps: Using the information from your reading, choose several priorities on which to
focus. Think how to build your knowledge through, for example, new reading, a briefing from
the organisation or for the whole board, meeting key people or stakeholders, having a mentor,
attending training, a board away day, and so on.
A learning plan: Look through the knowledge statements for each unit. Identify what you
need to learn about most urgently and what you would benefit from learning later on.
Consider the support that you need for the urgent points. Gather all of this into a one-page
learning plan, covering what, how, when and where you will extend your knowledge or
experience.
Aim and outcome: Creating an induction pack that covers the key things that new or
potential trustees should know about your organisation will help you and them be very clear
about your charity’s purpose and aims. The Standards are an ideal tool for helping you to
understand your broader duties and responsibilities as trustees and enabling you to explain to
new trustees what is expected of them.
Make a list: Use the Standards to compile a list of key things that you and a potential trustee
need to know about your organisation, for example, vision, mission, potential conflicts of
interest. You might choose to adapt this list for the trustee induction pack. In reading the
Standards, make a list of the questions you would ask if you were a new trustee. Prioritise
what needs to be known by a new recruit and when.
The path ahead: Think about changes to your organisation’s circumstances. Have its
financial structures become more complex? Is it looking to raise its profile with government?
Does it need to collaborate more closely with other organisations or expand into new areas?
Succession planning: Think about the terms of office of existing trustees and the need to
plan ahead for when people with key skills leave. What skills might need to be replaced in the
next year or two? There are some practical exercises in the Governance Hub’s Trustee
Recruitment Toolkit you could use – the toolkit is downloadable from
www.governancehub.org.uk
Summarising: Prioritise your list. This process will highlight any additional skills required by
the board to perform effectively. The results will feed into your recruitment process.
Aim and outcome: Identify the key roles, responsibilities and qualities required of a
potential or existing trustee or committee member for your organisation.
Research: Find out if your organisation already has any of this material for existing trustees.
If it does, obtain copies and put them alongside the Standards. Look at what is missing or
needs updating or re-wording. Think about anything specific to your organisation, for example,
what particular kinds of experience or understanding are most relevant? Consider whether to
structure the role description around the four headings of the Standards.
Assembling a pack: Each unit of the Standards sets out what trustees should have read and
have access to in order to perform their role in that area competently. Each organisation
needs to compile its own list as part of an induction pack. Think about what needs to be
added too, such as relevant documents from the Charity Commission. Look at the list as a
whole. Think of how these documents could be made easily accessible and understood, for
example, placed in a special trustee area on a website.
Plan the tour: Use the responsibilities section in each unit to shape the induction
programme. You might want to organise a tour of the buildings or projects or activities, or
arrange peer support from an experienced board member, for example.
Keeping the team together: Ensure that the induction programme has someone who
leads it or keeps in touch with new trustees as they move through the programme. You could
use the Standards to review the programme after six months and use a list of poorly-
explained information and responsibilities to create an action plan for improving your
induction process.
This information (sometimes called a training needs analysis) can then be worked up into a
detailed plan setting out the learning the board will undertake.
Establishing a framework: For each learning need, agree on: a time frame, the method of
learning (for example, teacher or distance learning, during an away day, within a board meeting
etc.), whether it is an individual/group need, how you will decide whether the learning was
successful, and any costs involved.
Reporting where you are: Appoint a pair of trustees (perhaps with relevant experience) to
manage the board learning plan project. This will give other trustees a focus and they can
provide regular progress updates on any learning undertaken.
The toolkit refers to the full text of the National Occupational Standards for Trustees and
Management Committee Members, which is published separately but should be used in
conjunction with the toolkit. The text of the Standards is available as a PDF download on the
Workforce Hub website, www.ukworkforcehub.org.uk. The Standards are also available in
hard copy from the Workforce Hub. The pocket size edition of the Standards costs £1 from
either Hub.
For details of other resources relating to the Trustee Standards, visit the pages about the
Standards on both Hub websites.
For help using the Standards with your board or committee, you could contact your local
council for voluntary services (CVS), see the useful resources section for contact details.
Governance magazine
www.charitygovernance.co.uk
Quality standards
The Charities Evaluation Services
www.ces-vol.org.uk
Community Matters – The National Federation of Community Organisations
www.visiblecommunities.org.uk