This week has been National Trustees Week. It’s an annual reminder of the importance of Trustees and a chance to think about your board, your governance approach and your trustees themselves.
Like all charities, VANEL is reliant on a group of volunteers – our Trustees – to help oversee and steer the organisation over the long term. And that’s what they are – volunteers.
So, from the staff team at VANEL – a big thank you to the current Trustees of VANEL (Darren, Alan, Jenny, Peter, Fumiko, Victoria) and to all the Trustees who’ve gone before them. Your help is appreciated.
This week is a good time to think about your board, your governance and the way your Trustees are supported.
Why not take some time to help refresh the skills for your trustees and board. Lots of information here.
For many years, the Charity Governance Code has been a framework for assessing your board wide and organisation wide approach to governance. You work through it to assess yourselves and at the same time decide what actions might help you improve your approach. It’s just had a new refresh and relaunch so you can access the new version of the code here: https://www.charitygovernancecode.org/en. Perhaps use this Trustees Week to kick start a fresh review of your approach?
Or may your charity needs some new trustees? Use this week/month to review how you recruit trustees and start advertising afresh? The Trustees Week website has lots of resources about Trustee recruitment as well as advice for those looking to become trustees.
And finally, VANEL have long experience of working with and developing Trustee boards (and committees). We have delivered our “Roles and Responsibilities of Trustees” training sessions to many groups (an introduction for newer trustees) and we can do board development through our “Developing your Governance” sessions. All of these sessions are bespoke – in duration, location, approach etc and we normally just deliver on demand and after consulting and deciding on the best training and support approach. VANEL Member organisations looking for training and support around governance can speak to Karl Elliott at VANEL to see what we can offer.
Have a good Trustees Week and thank you to every single Trustee who supports their charity.
More about Trustees Week: https://trusteesweek.org