Reflect
Identify the mix of skills and experience your board needs to lead your charity.
Decide which skills and experience are the most important to lead your charity, and identify which of these are missing from your current board. Trustees work collectively, as a team, so the people who will add the most value to your board will be people who can bring new skills and different perspectives, rather than 'more of the same'.
Think about the diversity of your board - which voices and experiences are missing from your board discussions? Recruiting a diverse board does take extra thought but it will bring many benefits. Consider what might discourage people from joining your board. Deciding to recruit openly will get you off on the right footing.
What makes a good board?
A good board keeps a charity on track and safeguards its future. It ensures that the charity, and its leaders, are accountable to the people it serves, its funders and other stakeholders. But a good board does much more than this. It debates important decisions robustly, drawing on many different perspectives, and always prioritises the interests of its beneficiaries. It celebrates the charity’s values and leads by example.
A good board does not happen by accident – it takes a lot of effort to build. Thoughtful recruitment is a crucial part of this. A charity needs a board which has the right range of expertise and experience to make informed decisions about its services and operations, to address current objectives and strategic priorities.
Recruiting for the team
Trustees always work as a collective, so recruitment is about finding people who will add to the spread of skills and experience that the board already has. Recruiting for the team like this, is a key element of successful trustee recruitment.
The recipe for a good trustee board
The right combination of skills and experience will be different for each charity and will change over time, but the list below is a useful starting point.
- The skills and experience to oversee current operations and future strategy – a skills audit can help identify gaps in your board.
- A diverse range of different perspectives and life experience – a diversity audit can be revealing.
- People with first-hand experience of using your services or the issues you tackle – trustees with lived experience can enrich board discussions.
- Commitment to your charity’s purpose and values.
- The ability to challenge one another constructively, and to welcome new board members.
"You want a mix of backgrounds and sectors on a board. It’s good to think about diversity of thought and lived experience, not just visible diversity.
Evaluating communication style is as important as skills and knowledge. You make sure you've got a balance of the sort of people who will read everything sent to them but might not speak up much in a meeting, alongside people who may skim read but raise important points in the meeting.
You need expansive, reactive thinkers, and the people who are detail-oriented reflective thinkers."
A board that is diverse in many ways - Leap Confronting Conflict
For us, we see a diverse board as being the board that will make the best decisions, and there's a number of different elements to our board’s diversity.
- Young people who have lived experience of the challenges that the young people who go through Leap programmes have experience of.
- Because some of the work that we do is in the criminal justice system and because a significant proportion of the young people that we work with are from black and minority and Asian communities, we are also keen to have diversity in terms of race as well.
- We also have diversity amongst the senior professional trustees – we deliberately have people who come from a combination of sectors, so we have charitable, public and private sector experience on the board.
- We've also worked hard to achieve a good gender mix on our board too.
We see a real value in bringing together lived experience with high-level strategic trustees. There is magic when they come together to help an organisation develop its strategy and how it governs in the best interests of the young people that we are here for.
Ben Kernighan, CEO at Leap Confronting Conflict from 2019 - 2022. Leap - a national youth charity that provides conflict management programmes and support to young people and the professionals working with them
Tension on a board can be a good thing - Leap Confronting Conflict
There are tensions between trustees on our board. But they’re not specifically between our young trustees and our experienced professional trustees.
As a conflict management organisation, fundamental to our beliefs is that conflict isn't necessarily bad. Indeed, it is necessary. And great leadership involves recognising that conflict is inevitable and that it can be used as a positive force for good because you want a board in which people will freely express different views and do that in a way which is respectful and where people value those different contributions.
I've been on a number of boards, and the best boards I've been on have been the ones where people have different perspectives. And the least stimulating, and least productive boards have been the ones where there has been less diversity – and I use that word in the very broadest sense.
I think diversity is really important in terms of protected characteristics. And it's really important in terms of diversity of ways of thinking. Diversity of ways of thinking will often be informed by the life and work experiences different people have.
Ben Kernighan, CEO at Leap Confronting Conflict from 2019 - 2022. Leap - a national youth charity that provides conflict management programmes and support to young people and the professionals working with them
Why board diversity is important
Good boards have a rich mix of trustees with different perspectives, drawn from their different professional expertise, life experiences, and cognitive approaches. Building a team which includes this mix of difference is not always easy, but it is worth it. The Charity Commission is emphatic that board diversity is important. Board equality, diversity and inclusion is one of the key principles of good governance, in the Charity Governance Code.
Make better decisions
Diverse teams have been shown to make better decisions. They are more fact focused, they analyse information better and they are more likely to innovate. Read about the case for more diverse boards and their positive impact in this FRC report, Board Diversity and Effectiveness in FTSE 350 Companies
Be true to your purpose and values
If your charity has a social purpose, and if it values inclusivity, it is essential that you reflect this at a leadership level. This is how you live your values and embed your purpose. Your board needs to reflect the makeup of your wider community, so that all people, including those from marginalised groups, can have confidence in your leadership.
Reflect the lived experience of your service users
It can be a powerful thing to have trustees with first-hand experience of the issues you address or the services you provide. They can enrich board discussions and play an important role in shaping strategy. You should recruit trustees with lived experience in the same way you would any trustee, but do not mistake them for token representatives of your service users. To avoid this, it helps to have two or three trustees with lived experience.
Charity insights on diverse boards
"The problem with the board when I arrived it was almost exclusively white and posh. With that kind of board, it was harder to ask the right questions or have the right debates.
The moment we had a more diverse board – more women, more racially mixed and more young people – a bunch of unhelpful questions evaporated. Such as assumptions like all young people do is spend time on social media. And what replaced them was more thoughtful, open, effective questions that inspired better debate. Just having diversity transformed the nature of the debates, and we had much better questions and conversations."
- Tom Lawson, CEO at Leap Confronting Conflict from 2010 – 2019
Help us serve our service users better - Sign Health
"On our board we have:
- Six deaf trustees – there was only one when I started
- A good gender balance
- A good balance of sexual orientation
- Good representation from different regions of the UK.
We really benefit from the different perspectives and points of view we get from our diverse board. The sheer range of backgrounds and experiences improves debate and helps with decision making. This is particularly relevant to us from a deaf perspective. We have:
- Deaf sign language users
- People who are deaf but don’t use sign language
- People who have been born deaf
- Deaf people born into hearing families
- People who went to deaf schools
- People who went to hearing schools
This broad representation of the deaf community is very important to us and is central to us serving the deaf community well. But we need to do much more to ensure that we have deaf people from Black, Asian or other minoritised backgrounds on our Board and that is where we are focusing with our next round of trustee recruitment."
James Watson-O’Neill, CEO at Sign Health from 2016–2025. Sign Health – the deaf health charity that works to improve deaf people’s health and well being.
Different perspectives lead to better strategy - Leap Confronting Conflict
I think the senior professional people on our board, who often spend their working days surrounded with people who are rather like them, find the experience of our diverse board one of the most interesting and stimulating things that they do in a working day. They get insights into the worlds of people who often have a different background, or are from a different generation.
When our professional trustees share perspectives on strategy, others on the board with different perspectives make insightful comments, such as:
- "Well, that's not going to work in practice"
- "That might be what you think young people want. But actually, this is what I'm hearing in the community that I'm living in or from the people that I'm talking to, who went through the programme with me.”
By bringing these people with different perspectives together, you're really maximising your chances that you'll come up with the right strategy for an organisation.
Ben Kernighan, CEO at Leap Confronting Conflict from 2019 - 2022. Leap - a national youth charity that provides conflict management programmes and support to young people and the professionals working with them
How to make your board more diverse
Many boards would like to be more diverse but have found it difficult to get started. There is no one easy solution. Diversifying your board will likely mean making a number of changes. Don't worry about doing it perfectly – boards often make mistakes along the way. Learn from your mistakes and move on. The most important thing is to have the resolve to do it.
This helpful blog from Pari Dhillon describes the steps to take to diversify your board in a meaningful way, that aligns with your charity's purpose.
Sub committees
Sub committees and / or nomination committees that have people from different backgrounds and perspectives are more likely to consider a more diverse range of candidates and may also avoid unconscious bias.
If you’re struggling to pull together a diverse committee because your board is not yet diverse you can consider co-opting non-trustees to help you. These could be beneficiaries of your charity, or members from the communities you are keen to see apply for the role.
Diversity audits
A diversity audit can help you understand how diverse your board is now and it helps you to spot the gaps in diversity that you want to fill. Diversity audits often reveal information you might miss otherwise because not all difference is visible, such as class, sexuality or invisible disability.
Tools: How to carry out a diversity audit
Removing barriers to new trustees
Take a fresh look at how you operate as a board and think about how this might deter potential trustees, especially if you want to attract people who are different to your existing board. If you think about these barriers before you start recruitment, and start making changes, or at least planning them, you will signal to prospective trustees that you are genuinely welcoming and inclusive. For example:
- Do the location and timing of your meetings exclude people with disabilities, or those who cannot attend in office hours, or because of caring responsibilities?
- Can you support trustees by finding accessible meeting rooms, by offering expenses, or holding your meetings online?
- Can you improve the quality of your board papers? Write in succinct, plain English, make clear points, avoid jargon and consider adding relevant graphs and images.
- Can you offer training and induction that covers basic board procedures for those new to them?
Recruiting first-time trustees
If your board already contains experienced trustees, why not widen your recruitment to include first-time trustees? This will give you access to a larger and more diverse group of people who can bring enthusiasm, a fresh perspective and a wealth of valuable skills and experience. To do this well, you need to demystify trusteeship and show how you will welcome and support people without previous experience.
“My first meeting was really good. There were three or four other new trustees and we each received a trustee buddy so I arrived with someone. A lot of people didn't know each other so we all wrote our names on cards in front of us.” Rebecca Broad, first time trustee for a wildlife trust
Tools: How to recruit first-time trustees
Charity insights on diversifying your board
"Boards often start with the goal of increasing diversity, but the place you need to start is with your charity’s purpose. Are we clear about our purpose? If we are, who are the people we need around this table to help us deliver that purpose? What different skills, perspectives and life experience do we need?
The board I joined as chair wasn’t clear about its purpose. So we developed our strategy and our ambition – which is all about creating a connected Clerkenwell – and this gave us a clear sense of purpose and the opportunity to explore who is in the organisation, at every level, including the board. The board I inherited had only one other trustee with a local connection, and it was all white and mainly male.
By focusing on our purpose we were able to agree three criteria for all new trustees: people with a local connection, who got what we were trying to achieve and who could bring diverse aspects of the communities we work with. This made diversifying the board more compelling and gave it more momentum. Because you have to be tenacious if you want to succeed with this. The previous chair was resistant to the changes, but being clear about how these changes support our purpose, and the link between our purpose and equity, gets everyone on the same page. Even so, the chair and CEO have to keep pushing at it. It took us about a year to do it, and it was sometimes quite painful. But it is worth it in the end: what we have now is a richness of conversation which truly reflects what’s going on in the area we live in."
- Arvinda Gohil, chair of The Peel
Learn as you go - Leap Confronting Conflict
We specifically wanted to recruit young people with lived expertise of the issues our charity supports. We were daunted by lengthy guidelines for how to recruit for diversity. So we decided to go ahead and recruit the young trustees we wanted and then asked them how we could help them settle in and become effective board members.
We made lots of mistakes in the first few years and the young people let us know where we were going wrong.
- Initially, we planned to form a shadow board of young people but the young people asked where would the decisions be made and the answer was on the actual board. So we realised that we needed to have young people on our actual board.
- One or two young people on our board would feel tokenistic so we agreed that we needed to recruit three young people.
- We set up a ‘buddy system’ where a new trustee is paired up with a more experienced trustee and they read through the board papers ahead of board meetings together.
- We regularly ask our new trustees for feedback on how we can make our board papers more accessible, such as adding images and graphs, and avoiding jargon.
Tom Lawson, CEO at Leap Confronting Conflict from 2010 – 2019. Leap - a national youth charity that provides conflict management programmes and support to young people and the professionals working with them
Identify skills gaps with a skills audit
A skills audit can help you assess the range of experience and skills that your board has – and identify gaps. Focus your skills audit on the qualities that you need for your charity’s current operations and your strategy. You should look to fill the gaps in skills and experience that you identify in your trustee recruitment. A skills audit can also help you see how you may be affected if a trustee leaves or if your charity faces any new challenges.
Tools : How to complete a skills audit
Agree what you're looking for
Once you've identified skills gaps and the aspects of diversity that need strengthening, you should agree how many trustees you're looking for. If you are recruiting more than one trustee, you can look for new trustees who, together, have the range of attributes that you are looking for. This can make recruitment easier.
Look at your list of requirements and ask if they are all truly necessary so that you do not limit the pool of people you are drawing from. For example, do you really need previous governance experience? Given that the trustee population as a whole is not diverse, you'll be restricting your search. And remember that you do not need to include skills that are already present on the board – your board needs to have a broad range of strengths collectively, but you don’t need every trustee to hold each of these strengths.
Of the skills and attributes you’re looking for, decide which are essential to find in your new trustee and which are desirable. This will be helpful when you write your trustee role description (see Prepare) and when shortlisting applicants (see Shortlist and interview).
Use open recruitment
With open recruitment you can appeal to a much wider pool of potential trustees than you can through your networks alone. This is important if you are looking for a particular skill or quality, and if you want to diversify your board. Use your own networks too, but always in combination with an open recruitment process.
Open recruitment will:
- Demonstrate that your trustee recruitment is a competitive process – trustees who are appointed will feel valued and those you turn down will understand why.
- Set expectations – a proper process signals that you value the role of trustees and expect prospective candidates to do so too. A tap on the shoulder suggests a more casual favour.
- Give both sides a chance to consider if they are right for each other and to decide if they want to commit.
Further reading
- Reach's diversity report: 'Trustee diversity: who is applying and who is appointed?'
- The Charity Governance Code principle on equality, diversity and inclusion in governance.
- Inspiration from other charities in the Charity Governance Awards board equity, diversity and inclusion category.
- Pari Dhillon's helpful blog describing the steps to take to diversify your board in a meaningful way, that aligns with your charity's purpose.
- Action for Trustee Racial Diversity's guide, From Here to Diversity: A practical guide for recruiting Black and Asian Charity Trustees
- Getting on Board’s guide How to Diversify your Charity's Board
Explore the trustee recruitment cycle
Reflect
Prepare
Advertise
Appoint and induct
