NCVO chair states his opposition to paying trustees 6

Governance | Vibeka Mair | 31 Oct 2011

Martyn Lewis, chair of NCVO, has said that both he and NCVO believe paying trustees is the wrong direction to take, and that people should celebrate the voluntary nature of trusteeship.

Their views clash with those of the organisation’s president Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbott, who last month said the payment of trustees was inevitable.

Lewis, who was speaking at the NCVO Trustee Conference today, said that too often trusteeship was presented as onerous and risk-laden “like paid employment without the benefits”.

He went on to say that this had led to calls for paid trustees, “but NCVO and I believe this is the wrong direction to take”, he said.

During his opening speech to the conference, Lewis said the voluntary sector was changing in a “seismic way”. He noted that in the past year the number of paid employees in the sector had dropped by 30,000, there was an awareness that more charities were closing down or merging, and that trustees were at the forefront of making these difficult decisions.

Toward the end of his speech, he warned that he thought the government’s austerity programme would last more than a year: “It will get worse before it gets better,” he said.

Directory: National Council of Voluntary Organisations (NCVO)
Who's Who: Martyn Lewis | Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts

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Stephen Lulsley
Independent Commentator and Consultant
18 Nov 2011

In light of Martyn Lewis's 'official' statement (with which I wholeheartedly agree) on NCVO's policy about trustees being paid, should Lord Hodgson now consider his position as President, having made a very public statement to the contrary, presumably without consultng his board or executive as to the official party line, while using his position as president to get 'airtime' and to express a personal viewpoint which had he not had this position, would likely have gone unnoticed and unreported?

[Reply]

Stolen
27 Nov 2011
Response to [Stephen Lulsley]

Well said. And worth storing this story for an opportune time.

By way of note there is no second category of trustee but there are third sector organisations parading as charities which is the source of the problems.

[Reply]

Bryn Price
Director
Kent Peoples Trust
28 Nov 2011
Response to [Stolen]

The rise in the number of organisations that rely only on income from public sector contracts but still call themselves charities is one of the problems the sector will soon have to face. Allowing charities to be social enterprise companies and not-for-profit companies and vice versa, seems to have made it acceptable claim the cudos of the charity sector when many of just SME's or groups of self employed contractors.

[Reply]

Jeremy Barker
Specialist Adviser
Scunthorpe CAB
29 Nov 2011
Response to [Bryn Price]

Where an organisation obtains its funding from is utterly irrelevant to whether or not it is (or can be) legally a charity.

It is what an organisation does, and that it does not distribute profits, that makes it (potentially) eligible for charitable status. Nothing else.

This has been a fundamental principle of charity law for a very long time and none of the recent legal changes have had any effect on it.

[Reply]

Geoff Roberts
31 Oct 2011

I wonder if NCVO's officers really understand the difference between the relatively affluent 'Great and the Good' volunteering as trustees for big charities and the unemployed but committed single mother travelling across town to act as a trustee for small local charities?

Perhaps we need to start with small charities being more liberal with expenses so the second category of trustee does not end up spending money they do not have to support a worthy cause?

[Reply]

Catherine Clark
Head of Communications, Marketing & Development
Royal School of Church Music
31 Oct 2011

Good. But the NCVO should get its messages in order before issuing unnerving and frankly upsetting statements.

[Reply]

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