Ben Kernighan
The debate about the future of the voluntary sector is often about funding and resources, obscuring the crucial area of leadership that charities must get right if they want to weather the impact of the recession and build a sustainable future.
There are already one million charity trustees who regularly contribute to their communities and help form the backbone of civil society. They are ultimately responsible for everything their organisation does and yet this is a sorely under-recognised role.
There is limited public awareness that becoming a trustee is a great way to make a difference to communities and gain new skills in working strategically, dealing with finance as well as honing interpersonal skills – all of which are recognised and highly valued by employers.
With the recession and impending cuts in the public sector, demand for charity services is going to increase and many charities are going to face tough decisions about how to allocate limited resources, making the role of trustees – and the job of finding them – even more important.
Yet it is increasingly difficult for charities to find suitable people for these posts with 43% of voluntary and community organisations stating they find it more difficult to recruit trustees now than they did five years ago.
An ageing trustee population
Compounding this problem is an ageing trustee population with 76% over the age of 45 while less than 1% of trustees are under 25 and the fact that only 5% of trustees are from a black, minority or ethnic backgrounds.
This means many trustee boards are not representative of the communities they exist to serve.
Currently, 80 per cent of charities use word-of-mouth to recruit trustees, meaning they often fail to recruit at all or fail to get the right mix of people and skills they need.
There are many possible reasons for this shortage and lack of diversity but the sector must take ownership of this problem and address it. The National Council for Voluntary Organisation's (NCVO) 'Get on Board' campaign proved it is possible to engage younger and more diverse audiences by using a range of measures including new technology such as text messages and targeting ethnic and specialist media.
The sector must invest in this process to make it successful and it must make a commitment to changing the culture of boards.
Ensuring voluntary organisations have diverse boards is not just about getting a good mix in terms of gender, age and race.
It's also about having people with a range of work and life backgrounds and the strongest boards bring together people with this diversity of experience.
From this week, charities will be able to use a new specialist trustee recruitment service run collaboratively by NCVO, law firm Bates Wells & Braithwaite and interim management recruitment consultancy Russam GMS.
Trustees Unlimited offers a professional and cost-effective service to recruit people from across the, private, public and voluntary sectors.
All candidates will be interviewed and reference checked to ensure they offer the right combination of skills, experience and diversity.
All charities need to work hard to create more inclusive and diverse boards. These will bring fresh perspectives to the ways organisations are governed and led and be more responsive to the communities they exist to serve.
That said, while it's clear we must step up our efforts to find new trustees, we must not forget to celebrate and promote the work of those who already have made this commitment and whose efforts make a vital contribution to communities and neighbourhoods across the country.
Ben Kernighan is deputy chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations
• For more information click here
