Just about every organisation can benefit from a bit of a tune up now and then. While schools get their OFSTED inspections, and health and social care facilities get their CQC inspections, there is no similar mandatory check up on charities. This is largely because the Charity Commission is not big enough to even consider regular checks of 167,000 different charities, and because they rely on the trustees to do it for them.
Our Governance Reviews can be as light touch or as thorough as you would like. Typically one might involve one day of preparation during which we get to know the background by reading your charity’s documentation (policies, Board minutes, annual and audit reports etc). Then a day on site interviewing executive staff and trustees. And a final day to prepare the assessment which would preferably be delivered in person to the trustees together. However, the exact nature of a review will be dependent on the needs and size of the charity.
The report is confidential to the trustees, although they are of course welcome to share it with the Executive staff. It will provide ‘traffic light’ type assessments of the key governance areas and suggest where the Board may wish to concentrate effort in the months and years ahead.
Our experience in this area comes from being asked to conduct reviews when individual trustees have completed the Induction Course and become a little uneasy about some of the practices in their own charity. An independent eye is the quickest way to get to grips with what is good and what is not so good. The Board can then take the suggestions from the review and after consideration create a work-plan (or “action grid.”)