Governance weekly for 19th April

During late 2017 the focus of the chatter and news around charity governance seemed to largely be on the newly reworked Charity Governance Code (remind yourself here).

But since the start of 2018, much of the news in the sector revolves around the upcoming changes to the Data Protection rules with GDPR coming into force in May 2018 and organisations preparing for this.

At the moment GDPR has been my topic of focus too. I delivered a “GDPR Basics” training session this week and another is scheduled for 1st May (see here). And at VANEL we’re active in preparing ourselves for GDPR.

So it’s probably good this week to remind all Trustees/board members/committee members that you need to be ready for GDPR and that ultimately the responsibility for this lies with yourselves. You may have staff or volunteers preparing for this, but ultimately you need to take responsibility for ensuring your organisation is ready for GDPR.

There’s just over one month to go. Get up to speed on GDPR now.

Data related news

On the subject of data – the ways in which charities handle data have an impact on the way individuals and the public ‘trust’ those charities. So read an interesting article from NPC here – “Should you trust a charity with your data?”. Is this an opportunity for us to raise trust in the people we interact with – simply by the ways we handle their data? Worth a discussion around your board table I think.

As we get close to GDPR coming in effect it’s probably worth you catching up with news from the Information Commissioners Office (ICO). For example, here’s their very latest newsletter to read.

And if you’re getting your head around the legal basis for processing data under GDPR (and you really should be) then this new interactive tool is extremely useful.

And finally – the overall guidance on GDPR from the ICO has expanded greatly over the past few months. It should be your ‘go to’ guide to get a full understanding of GDPR, so go check it out again here.

Finally, other news

The monthly blog from NCVO on Governance is out. Read it here. The interest this month is in the speech from the new Chair of the Charity Commission which is worth taking note of.

Legal compliance for your charity: As a charity or voluntary organisation, make sure you know about the legislation and regulation that applies to you and how to ensure compliance. NCVO have published a free compliance checklist on KnowHowNonProfit that any group can use. make the effort to go through it with your board.

As always, more governance news from us next week.