Charity boards need to provide strong leadership and support to help charities survive the economic downturn and public sector cuts.

A new report by charity consultancy and think tank, New Philanthropy Capital, highlights the importance of an effective board and calls on government to encourage more people to become trustees as part of the ‘Big Society’.

The report, Trusteeship 2010, looks at governance in the voluntary sector and finds that recruitment, training and evaluation of boards are under-resourced and need to be given a higher priority by charities, funders and government.

According to Ken Olisa, award-winning chair of homelessness charity Thames Reach, the role of a trustee is as central to a charity’s success as a director is to a business, especially in difficult times.

He said: "The danger is not so much that cuts are coming but that they will be stupidly implemented and charities will respond with knee jerk actions. Rather than making cuts across an organisation, it is important that trustee boards prioritise services, looking at which have the biggest return on investment and are most effective. This means boards will have to be more hands on and closer to the executive action until things settle down."

NPC believes that the recession and the demands on charities’ services have made it even more crucial that charities find the right people with the right mix of skills to build an effective board.

Tesse Akpeki, an OnBoard governance consultant who has worked with many charities, believes that the problems in the City lay not necessarily in structures or non compliance, but in poor boardroom behaviour, and poor board dynamics are sometimes evident in the charitable sector too:

"Some trustees, if they have been very senior in other organisations, have a tendency to want to run the board resulting in personality and ego clashes which can be extremely damaging to the charity.

"When trustees are only meeting four times a year, it’s hard for them to build trust and good relationships. They need to be in touch with what the charity is doing and get involved with the work between meetings. This will increase their understanding and engagement."

Although there are over 800,000 charity trustees in England and Wales, estimates suggest that about half of boards have a vacancy at any one time.

There is also limited diversity: according to the Charity Commission, nearly half of all trustees are aged 60 or over and less than 1% are under 25.

Many people are simply unaware that they can support charities by becoming trustees, or assume that they don’t have the time or experience.

"The Government's vision of the Big Society is all about social action—people volunteering their time and skills to support their communities," said Clare Yeowart, author of the report.

"We would like to see government and employers taking concrete steps to encourage more people to become trustees. They could give employees paid time off work for volunteering and help them find suitable trustee roles. Being an effective trustee could also be incorporated into personal development plans and appraisal processes."

The report concludes that charities and those they support are going to be hard hit by public spending cuts.

So it is more important than ever that charities receive the support they need from their trustees, and that boards are as effective as possible.

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