Evaluate

No recruitment process is perfect. Although it's tempting to move on to the next steps, evaluate your trustee recruitment process now while it’s fresh in your mind. You'll be grateful next time you come to recruit.

Review what worked and what didn't, and ask for feedback. Don't worry if you didn't appoint – use the evaluation to consider what, if anything, you need to do differently. This is also a good time to think about succession planning and how to create a pipeline of future trustees.

Evaluating your recruitment process

Trustee recruitment won’t ever be a perfect process. You should reflect on what went right and what went wrong and to learn from this.

Were you clear about what you were looking for?

Skills audit

Did your skills audit (see Reflect) accurately reflect the skills, knowledge and experience of your existing board and reveal what you needed from new trustees? If not, why?
Did your charity’s circumstances change during the trustee recruitment process?
If yes, you should do a new skills audit before starting on trustee recruitment again to identify the skills and experience you actually need.

Diversity

Did your diversity audit (see Reflect) reveal how diverse your current board is and enable you to identify the gaps?
Did you attract the diverse candidates you were hoping to? If not, why?
Were you explicit in your advert about who you were looking for?
Did you get someone from your target audience to review your advert to check it was appealing?

Review your advert, role description and recruitment pack

Were they clear about what your charity was looking for and persuasive about why people might want to become a trustee of your charity?
Did they include all the key elements covered in ‘What to include in your advert,’ in Advertise?
Did you do an accessibility check? If not, could you build this step into the recruitment process?

Did you post your advert in the right places?

What different recruitment methods did you use?
Were there any that were particularly successful or unsuccessful?
Did you post your advert in places where your target audience would see them?
Was the format, media, visual appearance and content of your advert appealing and accessible to your target audience?
How long was your advert ‘live’ – was this too long, too short or about right?

See Advertise for help with targeting your advertising.

Did factors outside the trustee recruitment process affect your success?

Are there aspects of the charity’s governance or other specific issues that affected the success of the charity’s trustee recruitment?
If yes, are there ways in which the board could improve its effectiveness or develop its practices to avoid these issues arising in future?

How did your recruitment process help or hinder you?

You can identify strengths and weaknesses in your trustee recruitment process by looking at the number of candidates at each stage. Look at how many people applied, were shortlisted, were interviewed and appointed. You should consider:

Are there any patterns in terms of who made it through and who didn’t make it through each stage?
Are there any patterns in terms of protected characteristics (for example, background, race, gender)?
What proportion of candidates actually met the essential and desirable criteria you were looking for?

Compare your charity’s trustee recruitment process with our Trustee Recruitment Cycle to help spot whether you missed any important steps and to find tips to improve your trustee recruitment process next time.

Were there any missed opportunities or particular strengths or weaknesses in how your charity conducted each stage?
How much did the recruitment cost, in terms of both staff/trustee time and money? Has the charity received a good return on investment?

Ask for feedback

Asking for direct feedback is a great way to understand your blindspots. Consider speaking to:

Independent person on the interview panel

If you had someone from outside your charity on the interview panel, ask them for their views on:

Your charity
Your trustee recruitment process
The quality of applications

Also, ask yourselves if it was helpful to have an independent person on the interview panel?

People who dropped out of the recruitment process

Ask people who expressed an interest in the role but didn’t apply why they chose not to apply. A form that requires 5 minutes to complete is a reasonable way to approach this rather than expecting them to respond in long form writing or meeting.
Ask people that did apply but dropped out of the recruitment process why they dropped out. A short form, with the option for a call or email, may be the most appropriate way to request this.

Successful candidate

Ask the successful candidate for feedback on the trustee recruitment process:

What attracted them to the role?
What were the easiest and most difficult parts of the process for them?
Were there any aspects that nearly put them off completing their application?
How helpful was the induction?
How does the trustee role match up in practice to what they were expecting?

Learning from your evaluation

Once you've gathered all your evidence:

Draw together the findings from your evaluation to identify what worked well, what worked less well, and what could be done differently next time.
Write up your evaluation so you have a clear plan to follow next time.
Share a summary of the evaluation with your board.
Make sure you save copies of the documents you used in your trustee recruitment so that you can adapt them for next time.

If you didn’t appoint

Even with a well-run trustee recruitment campaign, you might not recruit the first time round. Don’t be disheartened. As with paid staff, it’s usually better to appoint no-one than to appoint the wrong person. Although it can seem like a lot of work, it is likely to be less effort than having to manage a trustee that isn’t a good fit for your charity. Your efforts won’t be wasted as they will inform your future trustee recruitment.

Evaluate your recruitment process to see if you can change anything (see Reviewing your trustee recruitment cycle as a whole above). Here are some quick tips:

Review your applicants again. Are there any people who you didn't shortlist the first time round, but who might have the potential to be good trustees – perhaps with some extra support? It might be worth interviewing them at this point.
Review your recruitment criteria. Did you create any unnecessary barriers? For example, if other trustees have governance or senior management experience, do you need your new trustees to have this too? Did you ask for a professional qualification that is not essential?
Could you re-advertise through different channels and networks? Did you check that your materials were attractive to your target audience?
Were your interviews designed and run to give all your candidates a chance to shine?
Ask for honest feedback from your applicants. Ask about their experience of your process and the impression they formed of your charity. This is really important if applicants dropped out along the way or your chosen candidates turned you down.

Developing a pipeline of trustees

Even when you’re not looking for a new trustee, it’s a good idea to keep an eye out for people that have the potential to become trustees one day. Suggest ways that they could develop skills and experience that could help them become trustees on your board in the future. Future trustees could be:

Trustee candidates that showed promise but weren’t offered a position when you were recruiting.
Current volunteers at your charity.
Individuals involved in charity committees that could one day move on to the board.
Service users.

Introduce a board shadowing programme

Some charities have adopted new approaches to widen participation and share responsibility. You can introduce aspiring trustees to how a board functions with a board shadowing programme. A well thought out programme can help aspiring trustees, particularly those from groups currently underrepresented on boards, understand the skills, knowledge and experience involved while improving transparency.

This engagement creates a pipeline of potential trustees by making trusteeship more accessible to candidates who might have ruled themselves out of the application process.

A successful board shadowing programme also encourages self-reflection on inclusivity and current board practices, as well as enhances board dynamics by introducing fresh perspectives. Individual shadowees develop their skills, confidence, and professional networks while seeing first hand the governance process, and how your individual charity functions.

For more thoughts on shadowing programmes, this resource summarises the learning of five organisations running shadowing programmes: Smallwood Trust, John Ellerman Foundation, Charity Bank, University of Durham, Board Racial Diversity.

Co-chairing

Two heads are better than one. Co-chairing is becoming more common. It can spread responsibility, reduce pressure on one person, and make leadership more resilient in times of change. It can also open the door for a wider and more diverse range of people to step into this leadership role. Co-chairs bring different perspectives, skills, and networks. They can support each other and make the role more sustainable. Success, however, relies on clear communication, strong coordination, and mutual trust. And although co-chairing shares the responsibility, it does not halve the time it takes.

"Co-chairing is about leadership, inclusivity, and shifting away from traditional trustee models. In the case of Board Racial Diversity UK, we took most of last year to recruit the co-chairs, who then took part in the trustee recruitment. For us, that was part of expressing that we're willing to change the way we operate and move beyond a structure that doesn’t always fit the traditional mode of trusteeship. It’s also about being willing to look at governance arrangements and engage with people who have different circumstances, particularly those with lived experience.

One challenge we encountered was with the Charity Commission. Legally, you can have co-chairs. You don’t even have to have a chair at all. Your governing document can simply state that you appoint two people to lead. You can't write both co-chairs' names in the Charity Commission’s online portal; there’s only space for one name! We wrote to them about this suggesting that allowing co-chairs to be officially listed would be a positive move in terms of equity, diversity, and inclusion and we’re now in conversation with more senior people at the Commission.

Co-chairing fits within a wider approach to inclusive, collective leadership. I’m really keen on the idea that trustees bring specific skills; co-chairing can help clarify and elevate those contributions."

Malcolm John, founder of Board Racial Diversity UK, and trustee at the Charles Dickens Museum

Trustee succession planning

Make trustee recruitment part of your board’s annual work plan so you know in advance when you will need to recruit new trustees.

1. Keep a trustee register

Keep a register of trustees with a schedule that shows the following for each trustee:

When they were appointed
How many terms they’ve served
When their current term is due to end.

This will make you aware of upcoming departures from the board. It is helpful to stagger trustee appointments so you don’t have lots of trustees leaving at the same time.

2. Set trustee term limits

Trustee term limits clearly spell out how long a trustee term lasts and how many terms a trustee can stay for. You can review whether you want a trustee to stay at the end of each term and they are not allowed to stay beyond the maximum number of terms you allow. The Charity Governance Code recommends that trustees serve a maximum of three terms of three years, or two terms of eight years – a maximum of 9 years.

The idea of losing a good trustee because of term limits can be nerve wracking. But if a trustee stays for a very long time, will they remain as effective? A strong board benefits from a mix of experienced trustees and new trustees that bring fresh energy and ideas. Trustee term limits ensure a continued balance between new energy and experience.

3. Encouraging trustees to move on

There are a number of reasons why you might want an old trustee to leave, such as:

They have been on the board for a long time and you would like to replace them with someone with more up-to-date knowledge and experience.
Their behaviour does not fit with what the charity expects from its trustees.

Trustee term limits
It can be hard to ask a trustee to step down. Term limits eliminate this problem and mean that trustees are not appointed on an open ended basis. It also helps to keep your board fresh – see above for more about trustee term limits.

Code of conduct for trustees
When you have a trustee that isn’t behaving or performing well, it’s helpful to refer to a code of conduct for trustees (see ‘Making the most of your trustees’ above). A code of conduct for trustees sets expectations about how your trustees should behave. If a trustee is not following your code of conduct, you should discuss this with them.

Individual appraisals
If a trustee is not following your code of conduct for trustees and/or their performance is below what you expect, you can discuss this in an individual appraisal (see ‘Making the most of your trustees’ above). You should first look at how the trustee could improve their performance and if they need to make changes to be in line with your code of conduct. However, if you can’t resolve these problems, you should talk to your trustee about when they should move on from your board. You could support the trustee to identify new interests or opportunities outside your charity or suggest other ways this person can remain involved with your charity.

How to adjust when a trustee leaves

The departing trustee should do a thorough handover with the chair and/or CEO outlining key information about their work as a trustee.
If a trustee is leaving before the end of their term, get them to explain to someone they are comfortable talking to why they have decided to leave.
Get feedback from the departing trustee about:
- What they’ve learnt from their role
- What they’ve particularly enjoyed
- How they think your charity’s governance could develop
- Suggestions about what the board may need from a new trustee.
Look for ways that this trustee can remain involved with your charity even though they are no longer going to be a board member – possibly as a volunteer or as a member of a charity committee.
Use a skills audit and a diversity audit (see the Reflect section) to work out the future skills, experience and personal qualities the board will need when this trustee leaves. Don’t just recruit someone who seems similar to the trustee who is leaving.

"When I was a trustee at a mental health video games charity, we had an ambassador scheme for people who felt passionately about mental health in the video games industry. For succession planning, that was a really good thing, because we had people who showed an interest in the charity and who could potentially be upskilled and eventually become trustees."

Suneet Sharma, former trustee at Safe In Our World and It Gets Better UK