Charity governance, finance and resilience:

June 30, 2017

Resilience

15 questions trustees should ask

In 'The essential trustee: what you need to know, what you need to do (CC3)' the Charity Commission sets out the 6 key duties for charity trustees and what these cover - the top three being:

act in the interests of their charity and its beneficiaries
protect and safeguard the assets of their charity
act with reasonable care and skill

To deliver against these duties, charity trustees need to be able to identify the critical issues - the charity's purposes and plans, its solvency, its resilience and quality of governance - and to be able to review these at regular intervals. The Commission has designed 15 questions to help charity trustees carry out such a review and decide what they need to focus on.

Making the right decision for your charity

Charity boards have to make difficult decisions on a regular basis. The Commission's It's your decision guidance offers advice for trustees about how to approach decision making and key things to consider. As a reminder, when making decisions trustees have a legal duty to:

act within their powers
act in good faith and only in the interests of the charity
make sure they are sufficiently informed
take account of all relevant factors
ignore any irrelevant factors
manage conflicts of interest
make decisions that are within the range of decisions that a reasonable trustee body could make