Recruiting new charity trustees

When your charity is thinking about recruiting new charity trustees, there are a number of questions and requirements which you may wish to consider first.

• What does your governing document say? Are there any restrictions on how charity trustees are appointed, the number of trustees, or any qualifications that they must have.
• What skills, knowledge and expertise do your current charity trustees have and what other skills is your organisation lacking?
• How diverse are your charity trustees, in terms of their experience or background?Does this reflect the needs and experience of the people that the charity serves?
• Some background checks on charity trustees are legal requirements (for example, Access NI www.accessni.gov.uk (external link) checks if the charity works with children or vulnerable adults); others are good practice, like asking about conflicts of interest and making sure they can legally be trustees (for example are they under-age, or disqualified because of bankruptcy, unspent criminal convictions or similar).
• What induction and training will you offer to new charity trustees to help them understand their role and the work of the charity? How will you make them feel welcome and able to take part in trustee meetings? There are also useful tips on how to involve young people in running a charity on our website here.
• Do your charity trustees ever think about how well they are doing, both as individual trustees and as a board? It is good practice to do a review once a year.

For further information about these areas see the Code of Good Governance available at Community NI www.communityni.org (external link) 

There are many different organisations that provide these services. Below are links to some of these organisations from the charity or not-for-profit sectors. The Commission cannot show links to commercial organisations providing such services.

Community NI
www.communityni.org  (external link)

Volunteer Now 
www.volunteernow.co.uk (external link)