Written by Macc’s Capacity Building Team, this article was initially composed for Macc members. Membership is free and open to all with a vested interest in the city of Manchester. Please see here for more information and here to apply.
You may have read the introductory Macc Membership newsletter Trusteeship article and call to action; below you can find the full piece.
Trusteeship, what’s to love?
Helping charities to run well and to have robust, accountable decision making processes is part and parcel of our everyday work in the Macc Capacity building team. We love it. Some of us may even go to sleep dreaming of ‘good governance’, trustee roles, responsibilities, and ‘strategy before structure’… (naming no names!).
Joking aside, the voluntary role of trusteeship is a deeply valuable one. This unpaid role is arguably one of the cornerstones of the voluntary community sector; a key factor in effective organisational development and sustainability; a lynchpin of enabling the sector to keep doing vital, much needed work in our local Manchester communities and to do it effectively. Trustees are amongst charities’ unsung heroes!
Have we captured your attention, trustees and potential trustees out there? We think you are AMAZING and we need your help! Keep reading!
What do trustees need to be good trustees?
At Macc, we understand that trustees need support to learn and grow into their role on the charity’s board. If you are a trustee yourself, you’ll know this all too well. Everyone was a new trustee once! What did you need when you started out? What would have helped you navigate the learning curve more quickly? The answers to this can help attract, inspire and support new trustees. (We also recognise that experienced and long-standing trustees need help and support at times, and that’s why at Macc we offer refresher training, resources, information and bespoke support for charity boards. Check out our microsite here:https://manchestercommunitycentral.org/support-groups/trusteeship-and-governance
Why do trustees need support?
At Macc, we know from our own experience and from talking to charities over the years that the following are important to support new trustees: training, information, mentoring, encouragement, connecting to other trustees (knowing you are not on your own), being valued for asking relevant questions. In addition to what we offer, we want to get charities thinking about what they can offer their own trustees, and what they can offer each other.
New trustees can struggle in the role if their charity doesn’t yet have a strong induction process in place. We understand that charities can find it difficult to carve out time to develop strong induction processes, especially when the board is already busy governing the charity. This can though have a knock-on effect on trustee effectiveness and even trustee recruitment.
If governance is weak, it can be exhausting being the only voice challenging the status quo. It can also be difficult simply because it’s a new role and the new trustees are unsure of what they should/shouldn’t be doing. It can feel quite isolating, especially if there isn’t strong culture of asking questions and/or there is little contact or relationship building between trustees before and after or between board meetings.
Being a new trustee joining an established strong board can be tricky. It’s difficult to be the ‘new one’ or the only one asking questions or bringing new perspective and yet that is one of the great strengths of a good board –diversity, whether that’s diversity of background, experience, perspective, skills, knowledge, lived experience, age, culture, and so on.
Here comes the ask…
Being a new trustee, especially for the first time, is a guaranteed learning curve and can feel a bit lonely or daunting at first. Macc would love to involve existing charity trustees in supporting and encouraging new trustees. We want to enable this through our reciprocal Membership offer. We want existing trustees to share a little bit of insight into what it’s like being a trustee and to reassure new trustees that yes, it is OK to ask the right questions, yes it can be really rewarding role, yes it is challenging at times, but support is available (through Macc and other routes), yes it is worthwhile, yes you should keep doing it, yes you do bring something, yes you are needed!
This is your call to action!
As a Macc member, you’ll have already signed up to Macc values of being supportive, collaborative and influential. We’d love to invite you to be all three by supporting a new trustee.
We hear you ask “how can I help? What is it going to cost me?” Don’t worry, you don’t need to adopt a trustee for life! You might already offer support within your own board, and that’s great. We also want to encourage members to think about supporting new trustees of other charities. It could be offering one hour of your time for a one-off ‘coffee and chat’; offering a board shadowing opportunity at a single trustee board meeting (with agreement of your Chair). If you have more time, it could be mentoring a new trustee once a month, listening and chatting over coffee for an hour.
Why me? I’m not the right person…
If you are or have been a trustee, you have something to offer. It is immensely helpful for new trustees to chat to others, to hear about the rewards of trusteeship (skills learned, friendships made); the common challenges; the way you approached decisions, the way you managed your time… anything and everything about your experience is going to be helpful, there isn’t a wrong answer. No one needs to be an expert, just willing to share.
What’s next?
Look out for opportunities to support trusteeship and for more information from Macc about getting involved. We would love to arrange a ‘bank’ of trustees who could between them offer a range of opportunities according to individual capacity. This would ideally include trustees who might offer one-off (or repeat offers) of: coffee and chat, shadowing opportunities at board meetings, or longer term mentoring.
If you are interested in offering support or would like to connect to support yourself, then as a first step, please come along to our brand new pilot online space Trustees Connect https://manchestercommunitycentral.org/support-groups/training-and-events/macc-trustee-connect-space . Please note, attendance does not sign you up to do anything else, it’s simply a new, facilitated space for trustees to come together from any Manchester charities and share experiences.
Trustees Connect will be introduced and facilitated by the Capacity building team. If at the end of the session you feel able to offer something for the Trustees Connect peer support ‘bank’, please let a member of staff know and share your contact details with us.
Come along and tell us your ideas, successes and the challenges you’ve experienced in a safe environment.
We’d love to see you there and thanks for being a trustee!