Alongside the publication of our Good Governance Guide for Exhibitors and our call for applications to join our board, we heard from Leon Ward about the benefits young trustees can bring to an organisation’s board and some guidance for those looking to transform their governance practices.
Charity boards and their diversity crisis
One out of every 12 trustees is named John or David. 3% of trustees are under 30. 62% of the top charities, by income, have all-white boards while 92% of trustees are white, older and above average income and education. There is a significant diversity issue on charity boards; and it’s no secret.
Young trustees are nothing new. It might be helpful to define ‘young’ as under 30, but as the average age of a trustee is 57 I think we can be forgiven for increasing that. There are some 40 year-old trustees I’ve met who are still the youngest on the board… I’ve been one for 11 years, starting as a trustee of Plan International UK when I was 18 years old. I’m now 29 and the Deputy Chair of Brook Young People and recently joined the board committees of both Refuge and The Children’s Society. There are many, many young trustees out there working hard to help boards think about diversity whilst also governing their organisations.
Diversity of perspective is the jewel of the boardroom
The starting place for all boards and for decent governance is that diverse decision-making is always better decision-making. Over the years though, the conversations I have had with lots of boards have made it clear to me that diverse decision-making isn’t always easier, and to start to transform your board requires you to win over the hearts and minds of existing power holders: Chairs, trustees, CEOs and occasionally members. It requires us to hold a mirror up to our behaviours, culture and practices that enforce barriers to participation, and it requires uncomfortable discussions about unconscious bias.
It’s also worth saying that the charities that look at their practices in relation to young trustees often end up making changes that actually benefit all trustees. These can be super simple, like asking trustees which meeting times work for them, using a hybrid of face-to-face and virtual meetings and banning acronyms. They can be more complex like building a culture where every trustee claims their expenses, taking a more facilitative approach to Chairing or where an organisation reaches out to a trustee’s employer to help them get released from work to volunteer. Whatever you do, charities that are willing to take the steps will reap the rewards because when it comes to good governance, diversity of perspective is the jewel of the boardroom. Take a listen to how the Blagrave Trust have approached this and what it has done for their boardroom culture; summarised by their Director Jo Wells as, “We’ve seen a massive culture shift. Rather than trustees coming into a board meeting to impart their expert knowledge, we all come in to learn, and reflect, and problem solve together.”
“Diverse decision-making isn’t always easier, and to start to transform your board requires you to win over the hearts and minds of existing power holders”
To achieve a diversity of perspectives it is perhaps helpful to categorise people by their protected characteristics, or by what makes them ‘diverse’. But thinking has evolved: young trustees are simply trustees who happen to be young. They bring them with a whole range of other perspectives and backgrounds that will shake up the boardroom. Age is a cross-cutting theme of diversity that has the ability to cover all the other protected characteristics, whether that be race, disability, religion, gender identity or sexual orientation. It also cross-cuts against other non-protected characteristics such as geography, income, education and class. On the first board I joined I was not only the youngest trustee, but I was also the poorest and, at the time, the least educated. Of course, this doesn’t allow me to do justice to my peers’ backgrounds, for I am only making comparisons to the present day rather than when they were younger. But that perspective added a new edge to our discussions. Whether that be around digital innovation for charities back in 2010, modern working practices towards 2020 (completely proven during the pandemic!) or helping organisations think differently about social investment. The impact of diversity of thought is across the whole piece of work. It does not have to be pigeonholed to any particular business area.
Your starter checklist
There is plenty of guidance out there to help you. I wrote the Young Trustees Guide in 2015, which guides you through some of the challenges you may encounter when embarking on board transformation work. It also includes examples of what other organisations in the sector are doing. On that link I have also included a guide produced by the Roundhouse and supported by the Arts Council, and a guide on how to set up a Youth Advisory Panel. So, give these a read to immerse yourself into this concept. It will make for a smoother journey. You can also connect to the Young Trustees Movement, which was set up to help young people navigate the world of trusteeship but also to help organisations along their own journeys to improve their boards.
The best way to approach this is to categorise the stages to recruiting young trustees as: Recruitment and Appointment, Retention and Inclusion.
Recruitment
You need to interrogate your practices. I’ve compiled a list of questions you might want to think about to help you identify weak spots in your process:
- Are your trustees truly open to younger trustees?
- Have you thought about when and where your meetings are? Could this prohibit participation?
- Do you even openly recruit? Or is it that you ask trustees if they’ve any friends that might want to join?
- Do your adverts use words like ‘significant experience’ which someone might read as ‘many years of’?
- Are your adverts upfront about time commitment, duties, expectations and whether or not you are specifically interested in young trustees?
- Do you offer an informal chat so candidates can test whether they are right for you or not?
- Do you profile your existing trustees, sharing their stories so that a potential trustee can think ‘they look like, sound like or have similar reference points to me’?
- Who is on the panel? Have you given candidates notice about what to expect during the process?
Appointment, retention and inclusion
Once they’ve been appointed you need to think about how you can help them thrive in the boardroom:
- Is there a willing buddy for your new young trustee? (And indeed, for any new trustee!) This does not have to be formal but just a line to allow for sense checking of points.
- Have you asked your new trustees what skills gaps they have and what training they need? Can you provide that training?
- Have you set up an induction process that allows meeting of staff, reading key papers and seeing services/meeting service users?
- If a younger trustee is in a job where they do not have lots of control over their own diary, do you need to support them to navigate that conversation?
- Have you offered trustees the chance to join a sub-committee to facilitate deep dives into specific areas of expertise where the main boardroom does not allow for it?
- Is there a project that you can ask a new trustee to be the board link on?
- Could you arrange a board away day with a social activity to help board dynamics and cohesion?
- Have you scheduled annual appraisal chats to allow for performance reviews between trustees and Chairs?
Getting this bit right is critical and every trustee will have different things they need to get up to speed. And whilst all of the above points will help any trustee, irrespective of age, for young trustees there are so many blockers throughout the process of recruitment and appointment that organisations who show they are trying to overcome them become more attractive. This is about building confidence both ways. Start their journey with a conversation and keep the door open for reflections and further conversations about their experience with you. My closing tip is to not section them out in the boardroom as ‘young trustees’. Remember, they are trustees who also happen to be young. Everyone is equal in the boardroom: that’s the beauty of consensus boards!
The ICO are currently looking for trustees to join our board. We’re especially interested in hearing from people under 30 and those who reflect more widely the communities we serve across the UK, whether that be through heritage, lived experience or access to opportunities. This month we are holding several open Zoom Q&A sessions where you can learn more about what the role entails. See details here.
We’ve published a guide to Good Governance for Exhibitors which addresses the value of governance, looks at the symptoms of poor governance and signposts some useful resources for organisations who want to start thinking about their own governance.
Leon Ward is Programme Innovations Director at Future First and Deputy Chair of Brook Young People and serves on the board committees for both Refuge and The Children’s Society. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and the Royal Commonwealth Society and is author of the Young Trustees Guide. He tweets at @LeonJward.