Has your charity ever recruited a trustee and then regretted it? We grasp the nettle and offer suggestions on how to recover from and prevent THAT situation.
Iām sure in your charity it’s not that unusual that you agree to take on a new volunteer and then find out they are not quite suitable for your organisation’s or their own needs. It’s usually relatively easy to ask them to change their role, find something that benefits them and your charity, or even pleasantly ask them to leave, maybe find another, more appropriate, opportunity for them with another voluntary or community group (probably by looking at our volunteering website for Bracknell Forest).
But if that volunteer is a trustee…
There’s been a formal appointment process, informing the Charity Commission, hopefully a lengthy and comprehensive induction giving them high-level access to your confidential and strategic processes, to ensure they can understand and assist your good governance.
Only THEN do you find out they’re not right for your organisation.
- Maybe their motivation isn’t what you want or need: there’s a mismatch
- Maybe their skills aren’t what they said, or what you requested: mismatch
- Maybe they’re the best friend of one of your trustees and will agree with everything that person says but never anyone else: mismatch
- Maybe they want to primarily help with operational matters and somehow believed that by being a trustee they could change or assist with those: mismatch
- Maybe they don’t play well with others and canāt function in an atmosphere of collective responsibility: mismatch
- Maybe there are all those reasons or others you can’t fathom, but there’s a mismatch
ā¦and you can’t just ask them to leave or get rid of them easily.
If youāre the CEO or senior employee, a trustee is part of your Board of governance and effectively part of your line-management: you can’t sack your boss. If youāre the Chair of the Board, you may have helped find them, interviewed them, inducted them and now you find you’ve may have made a mistake.
What I will say very clearly is that not every trustee who doesn’t fit the existing Board’s demography or group-thinking is obviously mismatched. Please do not fall into that morass. Just because a new or potential trustee doesn’t have the same accent, education, background, age, gender, ethnicity, or political views as the rest of the Board does not mean they are incompatible with assisting and improving your governance. Unfortunately for some Boards, those criteria, whilst unspoken, are often used to call a mismatch or refuse a new trustee rather than accept a challenge to the status quo: a Board should be collectively aware of its bias. So, if a trustee doesnāt fit, be very, very clear it’s not your collective or individual discrimination.
Now, for some mismatched trustees, as with some poorly-matched operational volunteers, it’s easy: They’re self-aware and know it isn’t working and are happy to step away, find something else. Again, there may be more-appropriate opportunities elsewhere (inTRUSTed can help place them, as needed).
But for some new trustees, their motivation or method of recruitment may drive them to unnecessarily continue. That might be just because they’re so new to charity governance they don’t understand what is required of them: but really have you got time and energy to repeatedly cajole them into good and appropriate trusteeship, encourage them to attend training and check to see if they are learning?
It might be that another trustee recruited them, and they don’t want to be seen to let that person down. Or, in a worse-case scenario, their motivation may be more self-centred: they’re in it because they want kudos or personal advantage, even if that obviously isn’t financial as a voluntary trustee. And they can’t see that that isn’t being a good trustee. They’re giving their time, maybe even their skill, and of course you should just be very grateful…
And this is all to assume that your other trustees can also see the mismatch; we know that not all Boards are collectively-aware of poor governance within their midst. Trustees with mismatched motivation can disrupt a Board; such trustees who continue to disrupt and continue as trustees can destroy a Board, or at least its good functioning.
So, short of asking the Goodfellas for assistance after you’ve appointed this trustee, what can you do to ensure you maintain good governance from your Board as well as recruit properly-functioning trustees?
- We suggest that, whenever possible, you appoint people who are briefed on good governance and good trustee behaviour, already having satisfactorily answered your questions that can help you identify mismatches; this doesnāt mean you only look for previously-experience trustees. inTRUSTed can help: as well as recruiting, we train and equip potential trustees to clearly understand their role and duties.
- We suggest you might appoint a potential trustee for a āprobationary periodā as an Observer to your board, where they get access to watch and āsoftly-contributeā, without their involvement being formally recorded or able to action or change the organisation.
They would NOT legally be a trustee and their acceptance as a trustee is subject to their gaining understanding and their appropriate behaviour and contribution, as well as your Boardās agreement.
Now, this may be difficult: trustees, as volunteers, freely give time and expertise, and may balk at being put on ‘probation’. This needs handling with empathy and care, but if done so, will give your Board and the new trustee a basis to grow into good governance ā āit’s to see if it’s right for you, as much as to see if it’s right for the charity and our beneficiariesā. - We strongly suggest you give the potential (and probationary) Observer a trustee mentor from amongst the existing Board, someone who can encourage and explain, without necessarily justifying the status quo of how the Board functions.
As Iāve said, it’s a balance: trustees are there to challenge, both each other and the strategic and operational functioning of the organisation. At the same time, trustees are there to work together, make and stick to collective decisions. It’s a balance between stability, the history, status quo of the organisation with the needs of your beneficiaries and potential beneficiaries, a good reflection of the diversity of society and the changes needed to improve that through your charityās actions.
A good Board is dynamic: stable and changing, accepting and challenging, diverse in composition and similar in objective.
For more about good governance, assistance with recruiting and training the best trustees, get in touch with me, Mike Allen, involveās Trustee Recruitment & Liaison Officer, to find out more about the inTRUSTed programme and the comprehensive support we can provide to you and your charity.
Afterword: Is managing problem behaviour by a volunteer the same as managing that from a trustee? After all, trustees are volunteers too, but as we know, a āspecial caseā of volunteer as they lead the organisation. See Rob Jacksonās article on Tackling problem behaviour by volunteers and ask yourself if the same applies to trustees.