Board Effectiveness

Ultimately, it is the board of your charity or community group who is responsible for governance, so it is vital your board is effective.

Boards have very specific roles and responsibilities, including legal duties. Our section on leadership and trustees will give you more information, as well as our regular Roles & Responsibilities of Trustees training.

Further support available to charity leaders includes our tailored training and consultancy services, free one-to-one coaching with Henley Business School, and our networking opportunities and topical conferences.

The NCVO give more details about board responsibilities and provide guidance specifically on the legal duties of trustees. In addition, the Charity Governance Code is a useful tool to ensure you are covering all the bases.

Image courtesy of Wheelpower

Board appraisal

You can make sure that your governance is effective through internal or externally facilitated reviews. If you need additional help, you can commission expert, bespoke and confidential services from Community Impact Bucks through our Better Boards service.

We have selected some of the best frameworks and toolkits to assess board effectiveness for you.

Digital boards

Increasingly charities will want to embrace digital and the links below will assist in the board development as well as giving a model role description for a digital trustee.

Delegation to sub committees, staff or volunteers

Although there are legal roles which a board must have, there will be areas of work which the board will delegate to individual trustees, sub committees, staff or volunteers. NCVO’s Knowhow have expert and easy to use guidance.