Does the charity sector need fewer trustees?
Trustees do an amazing job, but expectations are insane. Is this model still fitting for a 21st century sector?
Do we need a board of trustees for every single charity? Hear me out. There are an estimated 580,000 trustees in the UK according to NCVO. You can see this as an incredible resource - that ‘army of volunteers’ everyone gets excited about when they want to make swingeing cuts to public services. But you can also ask whether this is not a huge duplication of effort. Is it realistic, or fair, to expect what we expect of trustees? Is it actually having that impact on 'trust' that regulators assume?
One of my intellectual heroes is cultural theorist Raymond Williams. He talked about what he called 'structures of feeling' that pervade certain areas of culture and society at different times. I think there is a structure of feeling related to distrust, anxiety, and paranoia around charities - I mentioned this in a previous short article about paranoid structures of governance. And this is part of the issue we have with restricted funding, lack of 'open and trusting' grantmaking, and with the increasingly barmy expectations of trustees by the Charity Commission. Media scandal and scapegoating add to this. Government attempts to silence dissent from the most vulnerable have also worked wonders in adding to this febrile and anxious atmosphere.
I fully understand the need for trust. And of course, charities need to be well-run. But is this the best way to achieve that?
Apparently not, given the mess we see on boards all the time - and the continued existence of fake charities that hit the news occasionally. Of course, the CIC model was set up to shake off some of the shackles of regulation - and then people swiftly found that you might as well just be an plain old enterprise if you were going to be a social enterprise. No funder would touch you with a bargepole unless you had ten volunteers around a table pretending to understand the accounts every three months. And then the funder would restrict the funding anyway....
Could there be a more effective way to do this that doesn't rely on a commission dispensing regulation at unqualified people from a distance, and then expecting thousands of those people - at least three for every charity of whatever size - taking on the responsibility, not only for 1) 'trust', but also for 2) providing expertise that they cannot possibly be expected to provide? I can understand it for organisations with multi-million pound turnovers, but so much of this is sledgehammer to crack a nut. (And if you have a multi-million pound turnover, use your money to pay for expert advice. You don't need hedge fund managers to tell you how to run your finances. In fact, that may be the last thing you need.) Federations even have huge numbers of trustees, for every single branch. I know many of them look in astonishment at their 10 trustees for all 150 branches - 1500 trustees, many doing the same thing, and all expected to have a huge range of professional skills. What is the balance here?
The thing is, this model was not created for this purpose, or this sector. Without real leadership in the sector, and with the Charity Commission for England and Wales taking only a ‘policeman’ approach, there is nobody to even think it through - and even less to action it, save for the usual think-tanks, and rather passive membership bodies. I just wish we could do some radical thinking about how to make this model work for the here and now. As I’ve said elsewhere the ‘public trust’ model is increasingly becoming a paranoid/ anxious structure of thought - where endless levels of control simply produce greater and greater levels of anxiety, and then attempts to contain the anxiety with even greater control.
I sometimes hope that a new The Labour Party Government might think about this. Although they will be rather busy I guess... LocalAuthorities and the NHS could help much more - if they weren't so financially strapped.
As a starter for ten, one thing that seems to me extremely urgent: setting apart the trustee role focused on 'trust', from the trustee role of providing free expertise. Infrastructural investment in the sector and the professional skills of its people could be a strong start - rather than always looking to bring those skills and expertise from outside. The trustee role focusing more on providing lived experience and user voice and steering delivery could make much more sense.
Less regulation isn't the answer I'm proposing. Any suggestion at all that trustees are not an amazing resource is not what I am saying. Culture change and some practical rethinking is what is needed. This has to start with research and frank discussion.
What do you think?
