Governance Weekly for 1st June
The weekly roundup from VANEL on good governance, charity trusteeship and non-profit leadership. News, information, resources and ideas. Complemented by our monthly “View from the Top” e-newsletter (Trustee Network members only), our “aboutgovernance” online discussion space for leaders and trustees and our @aboutgovernance Twitter feed.
The monthly Governance news roundup from NCVO is out for May. Read it here.
One interesting article referred to by NCVO is “How to build a successful charity from scratch in seven easy steps“. It’s a quick and easy read, but it’s important that one of these steps involves ensuring that Good Governance is in place. I endorse the simple overview presented here and remind you that VANEL is here to support you in a range of ways to develop your own good governance practices.
So with that in mind, we’ve scheduled another of our “Induction and Refresher Training for Trustees” courses on Tuesday 13th June from 3pm-5pm at VANEL offices in Grimsby. £10 per person (or £15 per person for non-VANEL members) or free to younger people (aged 18-30) who are connected to a charity board or committee. As usual this is a quick, two hour look at what you should know and do as a trustee or committee member, what you shouldn’t do, what you could do, how to behave, how to improve and much more besides. Contact me to book a place or for more information.
It’s Volunteer’s Week 2017 from 1st-7th June, and it’s a reminder that all Trustees, Committee Members and board members are Volunteers first and foremost. Take this opportunity to thank yourself and each other for all your hard ‘work’ you’re putting in supporting your own organisation and the sector as a whole. Well done!
And this Volunteer’s Week we’re getting started on a couple of new support ventures. Firstly, our VANEL Trustee’s Network online website is relaunching. It’s at www.vanel.org.uk/aboutgovernance and it’s a private site where members of our Network can access information and resources, ask questions, provide answers and support to each other, have conversations and generally get involved with other volunteer trustees and board members online.
Every day now there will be a blog article with information, comments, tips, ideas, suggestions, challenges, thoughts or opinions to get you thinking and improving. It’s your chance to join in the conversation.
Any trustee, board or committee member or member of management of any VANEL Member or Friend organisation can currently join up for free. Just contact me (Karl Elliott) to get your free login. It will be great to have you involved in the discussions.
Anyone can also follow the conversation on Twitter via @aboutgovernance too just to keep up with what we are talking about.
And our second new offer for Volunteers Week is the introductory launch of VANEL’s new SVAg – Supporting Volunteers Award (g)overnance. This recognises that those leading our organisations are actually all volunteers – and the way they are supported as volunteers is crucial both to making sure we have the best governance possible in place and by extension supporting our communities and beneficiaries well too.
We need a small number of charity boards and trustees to be ‘guinea pigs’ as we introduce our very first SVAg structures. There will be fees applying the SVAg in due course, but anyone helping out in the ‘first wave’ will get an inside track and serious discounts! If that sounds of interest then let me know and we’ll see what our next steps can be.
Karl Elliott, Development Manager
www.vanel.org.uk/governance – for resources and information
www.theviewfromthetop.org.uk
www.youngleadersmatter.org.uk
@aboutgovernance