Three out of four charities struggle to recruit trustees with the background or skills they need, according to recent research by Getting on Board. However, with 90 per cent of respondents saying that they recruited most of their trustees through personal networks, it’s not surprising. How many of us would find our charity’s next CEO or fundraising director solely by “asking around”? It’s even more inconceivable that we would employ someone without requiring an application and interview or any references.
Getting on Board campaigns for open, rigorous trustee recruitment. And we now know for a fact that open trustee recruitment works, regardless of size, cause or location.
Last year, with the support of the Pears Foundation, Comic Relief and the Anjoli Stewart Fund, we set about proving our assertion that there is a direct correlation between professional, open trustee recruitment and success in finding the skills, knowledge and experience that a charity needs from its new trustees.
The resulting programme, Trustee Recruitment Pathways, worked with 30 small to medium-sized charities across England and Wales, with support from a wide variety of partners, including Reach Volunteering, the Association of Chairs, the Behavioural Insights Team, The Guardian, CAF, the Association of Charitable Foundations, ICSA: The Governance Institute and many more. As a result, of the charities who advertised during the programme:
- 100 per cent recruited new trustees
- 68 per cent felt they were better equipped to deal with the challenges facing their charity than before
- 35 per cent felt their board was more representative of service users, and
- 65 per cent felt their board was more diverse.
In creating and testing the programme, we identified 10 steps to success:
- Read your governing document. How does it require you to recruit and appoint new trustees?
- Involve your trustees, members and staff. Who will be involved and at which stage?
- Work out what is missing from your board.
- Write an engaging but honest advert and information pack.
- Advertise by targeting where you think people with the characteristics you need will see the advert.
- Shortlist and interview against agreed criteria.
- Invite likely appointees to observe a board meeting.
- Take references, check they are eligible to serve as a trustee and appoint.
- Let all applicants know the outcome. Reject well. These are potential supporters of your charity and potential trustees of other charities.
- Welcome, induct, train, signpost to Charity Commission and other resources, and regularly check in with new trustees. If you fluff the induction stage, there’s a real risk your new trustee will leave – or coast.
Top tips for effective trustee recruitment
- Be diplomatic with your existing trustees. Trustee recruitment isn’t a criticism of their contributions – it’s about keeping the board equipped to support the organisation.
- Your CEO should be involved in the process but should not decide who to appoint. Trustee appointment is the job of the board (and/or membership) not the CEO, who is conflicted since they would be recruiting their own boss(es).
- Go to potential trustees; don’t expect them to find you.
- Don’t assume that your future trustees already know that they want to be a trustee. Don’t even assume that they know what a trustee is.
- Continue to use your personal networks to get your advert out there. But don’t invite people to join your board.
- Induction is key, particularly if your new trustee hasn’t been a trustee before.
- Don’t draw the process out for months and months; you’ll lose interested applicants along the way.
How to work out who you need on your board
Formal board skills assessments are available, but here’s a quick and easy alternative. At your next board meeting, ask yourselves:
- What skills, knowledge and experience do you have around the table (personal and professional)?
- What challenges and opportunities are facing your charity over the next five years? What skills, knowledge and experiences do you need to navigate these?
- What’s the gap between what you have now and what you will need to deal with the organisation’s challenges and opportunities? Will this change because of existing trustees standing down?
- What diversity of experience, backgrounds and protected characteristics would enhance your board? Do you benefit from a range of people with a variety of ideas and views? Does your board reflect your beneficiaries or do you need to recruit someone with lived experience of the issues you are seeking to tackle?
What to include in a trustee advert
- What does your organisation do and where is it located?
- Why should potential trustees be excited about getting involved?
- What is a trustee? (An unpaid committee member)
- What skills, experience, backgrounds are you looking for from your new trustees and why?
- Why should people apply (sense of giving back, new skills and networks, training)?
- Can trustees claim travel or other out-ofpocket expenses?
- What is the likely realistic time commitment? Where/when are board meetings?
- How can potential trustees find out further information?
- How should people apply (CV and cover letter)?
- What is the closing date?
Possible barriers to recruitment at advertising stage
- The biggest barrier to success is not advertising. Advertising doesn’t have to mean a full-page advert in a newspaper, but it does mean targeting trustees with the characteristics you need. What do they read? To which networks, associations or clubs do they belong? Who do they know? Who employs them? Where are you likely to find them either in person or remotely?
- Another obstacle commonly put up by charities is requiring people to contact them for a chat before they apply, or requesting they call up for more information. You can offer an optional chat for those who want it, but if there is further written information available, put it online.
- Requesting previous board experience (instead, offer training if people haven’t been a trustee before).
- Omitting a closing date. This encourages fewer applications and is frustrating for people who do apply.
- Having a high time commitment. Do all of your trustees need to commit equal amounts of time, or do you have the flexibility to appoint trustees with less time but who will make key contributions?
- Meetings that are held during office hours or in places that are hard to get to.
- Beware of how you frame long lists of requirements. You might mean that applicants need one or more of these but, unless you state this explicitly, applicants invariably read such lists as needing all of the requirements in one person.
- Making the role sound inordinately complex or tedious. Be honest and realistic but, at the end of the day, this is your chance to “sell” this position. This is not an opportunity for existing trustees to vent about what a difficult and painful job they are doing.
Advertising tips
There are some places you should advertise almost regardless of who you are looking for:
- Your own communications channels, including social media
- Reach Volunteering, the largest online source of trustees in the country
- Local channels such as your volunteer bureau – they will also post to Do-it – or community magazines.
Then, think about where the people you want to recruit look in their professional and social lives, and get your advert seen in those places. Don’t just advertise in one place. We found that charities that used more than three channels had the most success. But be targeted.
Use personal networks wisely. For example, if you’re looking for an HR person and your neighbour works in HR, rather than asking them to become a trustee, ask for their help and advice on where to post the advert.
Trustee recruitment costs time but you don’t need to spend a penny on advertising. However, if you use agencies for paid staff, you might want to think about specialist help to recruit trustees too. Reach Volunteering provides this through their Trustee Works service, as do a number of commercial agencies.
Where to advertise
Finance skills
ICAEW volunteers, the Honorary Treasurers Forum; local accountants; relevant LinkedIn networks; large local employers such as the NHS, universities or larger businesses in your community.
Communications & marketing skills
Charity Job - free for voluntary roles; the Media Trust; relevant LinkedIn and Facebook groups; The Big Give Trustee Finder; PR agencies; relevant university courses.
HR
People Management Jobs – free for voluntary roles; relevant LinkedIn networks; large local employers.
Lived experience of your cause
Local press and radio; other charities; your own supporters’ network; social media.
Download the Trustee Recruitment Guidance.
Penny Wilson is chief executive at Getting on Board
Case study: Heart UK - The cholesterol charity
Over 250,000 people in the UK have inherited high cholesterol or other inherited blood fat conditions, but only around 25,000 are identified, which means that most are not aware they could have an early heart attack or stroke. We aim to identify 50,000 by 2023. We are a growing national charity providing expert support, education and influence to people with high cholesterol, their families and healthcare professionals.
We generally struggle to recruit trustees. We knew we wanted to recruit new trustees and started the process by conducting a very basic skills audit of our existing board. This process identified the need for two new trustees: a treasurer and a trustee with fundraising experience. We also wanted to increase board diversity if possible.
Our start point was the treasurer. We wrote to the big accountancy firms, who proved to be very supportive and helped by featuring the position on their alumni websites and included our adverts on their newsfeeds. Sadly, however, this did not lead to any appointments.
Feeling a little frustrated with the time this was taking and knowing we had a second trustee to find, we discussed how we could improve the results. I read about Getting on Board, set up to support charities with recruiting trustees. They ran a training session in London attended by myself and our chair. This had a huge impact.
The day was enjoyable, informative and proved we were not alone in our struggles. Three key lessons had a major impact on our thought process.
The advert itself
We changed the approach to our written advert, making the content more relevant and the role more attractive.
Getting on Board provided advice and demonstrated what best practice looks and reads like.
From now on, our adverts will include:
- An eye-catching, relevant headline
- Being clear this is a voluntary role with reasonable expenses
- Stating that the charity is an inclusive organisation, and welcomes applications from people from all backgrounds
- A deadline (a simple point, but one we had overlooked). Role description We made the job description clearer, including:
Role description
We made the job description clearer, including:
- The fact that the new treasurer will not be expected to actually do the work, but is there simply to oversee matters
- Stating a realistic time commitment, including time for board matters as well as treasurer matters.
Where to advertise
- Getting on Board provided a list of options and places we had not considered; we included most of these in our recruitment campaign.
As a result of the changes, we went from having zero expressions of interest to six expressions of interest and five applications. We were able to appoint two new trustees: a treasurer and another who we decided would hugely benefit the board with her wider knowledge and experience.
We took the same approach with the fundraising trustee.
Initially, we were unsuccessful, even after applying what we had learned. We spoke to Getting on Board and they advised that fundraisers are often focused on their day jobs and don’t think about serving on a board.
So we added the wording: “Whether you are an experienced trustee or wanting to take your first step at board level, we would love to hear from you.” This helped and we were able to recruit a fundraising trustee. Another positive result was that we increased the age diversity of our board. We are now preparing to recruit a new chair. Again, we spoke to Getting on Board regarding the process. They suggested bringing in an external experienced chair to help us with the selection, who may have a different perspective from the current chair and trustees. This idea has been accepted by our board and so the recruitment process begins with the benefit of all we have learnt.
Jules Payne is chief executive of Heart UK – The Cholesterol Charity
