Charities must offer better learning and development for trustees if they are to recruit a more diverse board of trustees, a panel of governance experts has said.
Speaking at the Association of Chairs event Making Boards Better last Thursday, governance consultant Penny Wilson and Charity Commission strategic policy lead Holly Riley called for charities to improve their learning and development offers for current and future trustees.
When noting that the retention of new trustees is often low due to a lack of training opportunities, Riley told the event in London: “We definitely see that in the data, people are a trustee for a year and then leave.
“Take time to go: ‘Why aren’t those people coming in? Why isn’t this working?’ And again, it’s back to learning and development.”
Call for more funding
Wilson echoed Riley’s sentiments, saying: “This is the typical journey of a trustee: we’re asked to join a board with no process and certainly no conversation about potential development needs. We then get little to no induction.
“We get no expectation set that we will access any learning and development. No development is offered or highlighted beyond on-the-job learning. And then there’s no regular conversation about development gaps.
“So is it any wonder, particularly for trustees from underrepresented groups, that our trustees aren’t giving up [time] to develop themselves? Of course, trustees need to bring useful things. Of course they do.
“But the risk, and I think this is a risk that we are absolutely living, is that people think they’re the finished article, but we could be so much more useful if we arrive useful and then continue to develop ourselves.”
Wilson acknowledged that due to traditionally low demand for trustee training, the present offerings are “really, really limited”, but added that there should be more funding available for training and support programmes, saying that “we can create the demand if we put our back into it.”
Their comments came after a consultation carried out by the Association of Chairs earlier this year highlighted that many trustees who responded to their consultation said that developing “a learning culture for trustee boards” should be a high priority for the sector.
Trustees also said that charities should prioritise developing principles to guide the behaviour of individual board members, as well as increasing diversity and inclusion on boards.
