Governance round-up: January 2023
Welcome to our monthly governance round-up. As we begin a new year, governance consultant Sally Stephens looks ahead to the big stories for 2023.
Cost of living guidance
We know that the increased cost of living has affected many people who work with charities and access charitable services. The Charity Commission has recently published new guidance on managing financial difficulties in your charity which explains the duties of trustees when making difficult decisions.
At NCVO we have also enhanced the support we have for trustees in this area:
- In partnerships with Withers LLP we updated our legal compliance checklist – a great tool to help members keep on top of the legal and compliance issues that need to be considered by boards
- We updated several pages in our financial management content:
In the news
Trussell Trust “raids reserves”
Following a year of high-level grant-making to support food banks across the country, the Trussell Trust has posted a £16.4m deficit. The charity took the decision to use its financial reserves to ensure that £28m of grants could be disbursed to support an 80% rise in demand for food parcels.
Read the Trussell Trust Annual Report.
Help for Heroes manages reputational risk
In the final week of 2022, Help for Heroes stated it would no longer work with Jeremy Clarkson. The TV personality was a founding patron of the organisation.
A spokesperson for Help for Heroes tweeted: ‘Whilst Jeremy was involved with us in 2007, he hasn’t been an active patron for some time. We have written to Jeremy & we will not be working with him in the future.’
Read our help and guidance on managing risk.
Training and events
Governance Forum
We are relaunching our Governance Forum, a space for people supporting charity governance to come together in a community of practice. If you would like to join us, please get in touch. Our first Forum event will be on Tuesday 18 April 2023.
Online governance training
We run regular online trustee inductions and refresher courses over two half-days. We’re also offering brand new courses on fundraising responsibilities for trustees, safeguarding essentials for trustees, and supporting good governance.
eLearning induction for trustees
We offer an eLearning module for trustees. This course gives trustees a low-cost introduction to their roles.
Member events
We hold regular member assemblies and welcome events.
Sally Stephens is an NCVO governance consultant. For more regular updates follow @Sally_Steph or @NCVO on Twitter.