The Charity Commission has explained why it has yet to introduce requirements for charities to report the diversity of their trustees.
A report commissioned by the regulator in 2017 called Taken on Trust recommended that the Commission should require all charities with an annual income in excess of £500,000 to report the diversity of their board of trustees in their annual return.
Last year, 65 organisations wrote to the regulator to encourage it to introduce such a requirement.
However, the Commission did not do so when it concluded its review of its annual return reporting requirements.
At a Small Charity Week event yesterday, Mike Allen, trustee recruitment and liaison at Involve Community Services, said he was “really surprised” the Commission did not ask questions about trustee diversity in its annual return.
He described the Commission’s decision not to introduce a requirement as “an opportunity missed”.
“The problem is we don’t have the data. And therefore, as a trustee recruiter […] we don’t know where we’re missing so we can’t target. And that’s the biggest thing.”
Holly Riley, head of strategic policy at the Commission, said in response that she was “super keen” to collect more data on the diversity of charities’ trustees but said the regulator has decided that the annual return was not the best way to do that.
“The reason we didn't put it in the annual return is, one, that it is filled in by one person from the charity, and therefore there is a question [over its accuracy].
“As well, with a lot of small charities, it wouldn’t give us data that we could publish, because of the small numbers of people and the identifiable characteristics in there.
“So, I don't think personally that the annual return is the kind of golden bullet – I think there are other ways of doing it. And it’s definitely something that I'm super keen that we do. But it just isn’t in the annual return.”
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