Governance Tip 1: Complete your annual governance review
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- by Tony Haren
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Attention all Chairs of Voluntary Committees – Good Governance Tip 1: Complete your annual governance review.
“How do you know your governance is good and meets the standards required?”
The response from Chairs (and CEOs; board members) to this question is often varied – “we have a strong board/CEO”; “we have plenty of reserves”; “we won an award for what we do”; “we’ve never had any problems with the regulator”; “we meet regularly as a board”…… and so on.
Good Governance Tip 2: Sort out your policies
Good Governance Tip 3: Manage your Conflicts of Interest
Good Governance Tip 4: Manage your charity’s risks
Now there is nothing wrong with these responses and they may well be indicators of good governance.
Annual Governance Review
Best practice however suggests that you should carry out a formal governance review annually, with an external review every 3 years (obviously not a practical requirement for very small charities).
And yet some boards admit that they don’t know where to start with a governance review. Ad hoc focus on some topics…..time-consuming paper checklists…… external consultants?
These are all ways to complete your review and because they do take so much time or are too expensive, the annual governance reviews get deferred. Instead, the board continues to assume that if nothing appears broken, there is no need to fix it.
Where do you start with governance?
And so many trustees don’t know where to start.
The point is you need to start somewhere. So why not start at the beginning? Complete a thorough review of the governance in your charity now. Benchmark your arrangements against the charity governance codes. And then see what your governance gaps are.
And now you can complete your charity governance review online with our interactive Charity Governance Review Tool. Let it do all the hard work with the automated process that is very easy to use.
Annual Governance Review – online
For a practical and effective alternative for your annual governance review in 2024 then watch this short Charity Governance Review Tool Explainer Video…..
If you would like more details you can access a Governance Tool Free Preview here.
Or send me a message and we can arrange a live (15 minute) online demo for you and your team. With no obligation.
Tony Haren
Helping Charity Boards to assess and improve your governance – online