Now, New and Next

With over 170,000 registered charities in the UK, and a further 20,000 organisations with charitable status, trustees play a crucial role in ensuring the charities that they govern operate effectively and ethically, and in the best interests of the beneficiaries and the communities that they serve.

The commitment and dedication of volunteer trustees is essential to the impactful and sustainable functioning of the charitable sector. However, one of the biggest challenges lies in the myriad of responsibilities that trustees must navigate, all as volunteers. Continued changes to regulation and compliance mean that trustees must do more to remain up-to-date and to ensure that they are carrying out their role effectively.

Every time the sector faces a high-profile issue with charitable governance, trustees receive more regulation to deal with. And while, to some extent, this is understandable, there is a worry about just how much more pressure volunteer trustees can reasonably sustain.  Boards face multifaceted challenges in relation to areas such as sustainability, financial resilience, collaboration, diversity and digital adaptation.

To ensure effectiveness, trustees need ongoing support and training to ensure inclusive, innovative and effective governance. This issue of Now, New and Next explores some of these challenges and opportunities in more detail. We hope that it is a useful guide for charities looking to enhance and support their governance.

Thank you to all the contributors to this issue. If you would be interested in contributing an article to a future issue, please send an email to [email protected] and we look forward to being in touch.

Michelle Wright
Director, Arts Fundraising & Philanthropy
@MWCause4