Governance is a term used to describe the charity trustees’ role in: the long term direction of the charity, including its objectives or purposes. implementing policies and activities to achieve objectives … accountability to those with an interest or ‘stake’ in the charity.

Trustees of charities are encouraged to conform with a recently issued code of conduct

• an expectation that the board will review its own performance and that of individual trustees, including the chair, every year, with an external evaluation for larger organisations every three years
• that no trustee should serve more than nine years without good reason and that term limits are important for accountability
• thinking carefully about how boards recruit a diverse range of trustees with the skills and experience required to lead a charity
• boards involving stakeholders in key decisions and operating with the presumption of openness
• emphasis on the role of the chair and vice chair in supporting and achieving good governance
• increased oversight for large charities when dealing with subsidiary companies, registers of interests and third parties such as fundraising agencies or commercial ventures
• that the board evaluate a charity’s impact by measuring and assessing results, outputs and outcomes.

Many of the elements of good governance are available on charity regulator sites.

We help the Trustees by facilitating workshops to explain in more detail how good governance works in practice.