Getting on Board — Festival of Trusteeship — Day 3
I am grateful to have attended the Festival of Trusteeship along with a few peers from JSPF and have consolidated my notes from Day 3 in this article. The following session was a part of the “Refining Skills” track as part of the Festival of Trusteeship on the 3rd of November 2021. The sessions in this track were all about bringing the charity leadership board to the fore and honing your governance expertise.
Impact: What does it mean for trustees?
The session covered a few critical aspects regarding the significance of impact for the board, what trustees need to know about impact, how impact can be recognised, and ended with a few practical tips and techniques that were consolidated in a framework to identify and work on achieving the desired impact. Although the sessions and discussions were specifically directed towards small and medium-type charities/organisations, the frameworks and ideas mentioned could be extended to organizations of any size.
Words matter
Words matter, especially when you are trying to explain what your charity ACTUALLY does.
“I’m so clever, that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I’m saying”
-Oscar Wilde
It’s important to clearly mention the vision and mission your charity holds and express it without any jargon.
Don’t be a buzzword Barry or a jargon Janet.
One way to proceed through this is to ask yourself as a member — Is there anything else that you find to be more important than the mission and vision? Most charities and organizations focus on making a meaningful impact through their work. Defining the impact clearly and ensuring its aptness is key to:
- Monitor funding targets and outcomes
- Learn, reflect, improve and change
- Motivate staff, volunteers, and others
- Inform and inspire support
Impact: What you need to know
Now that the importance of specifying the impact your charity creates was understood, the question of how to clearly establish your charity’s impact arose. The speaker, Steve Allman, discussed a few critical points that could be instrumental in your efforts to define the impact of your charity:
- Ask questions — Why is something important for your charity?
- Focus on the purpose, effect, and outcome of your actions
- Consider the likely audience being targeted
Impact: How can you find out?
One of the trustees I happened to converse with in a breakout room mentioned she was unsure of her exact contribution to the organization and mentioned how charting out the expectations as a trustee would help. This led us to ponder over external ways to measure our individual impact. A few of my takeaways from the external sources who can inform about your impact were:
Who can tell you about impact?
- Clients, service users, beneficiaries
- Internal: paid staff and volunteers
- External: funders, referrers, partners
What can tell you about impact?
- Interviews, surveys, workshops
- Case studies, observations, feedback
- Funding reports, management reports
- Social media posts, maps
- Photography, films, illustrations, art
And finally,
Things to consider:
Defining your impact, recognising and working on it can be made better with these valuable points kept in mind:
- Use the right methodology to define your impact — A sledgehammer is not used to crack a nut. Organize your strategies specific to your charity — lose what doesn’t aid the goal.
- Identify your audience. Who are you trying to engage and what’s the best way to engage with them?
- Go through potential risks. Does your impact activity post any risks to yourself or your audience?
The above tips are beautifully consolidated in the following impact framework:
How to shortlist and interview trustees?
- Work on your trusteeship constitution — containing details of trustee Code of Conduct, role and responsibilities of the trustees, powers of the trustees and checks and balances on those powers etc.
- While deciding on the people who will be involved in the recruitment process in different roles and capacities, make sure to account for conflicts of interest.
For example; you cannot have the CEO of the non-profit recruiting for the trustees because there’s a direct conflict of interest involved there. While the recruitment team MUST consult and seek the views of the CEO, the CEO shouldn’t be involved in the final voting or scoring.
- While designing the recruitment process, see if you can make the process experiential. This will be a win-win for the parties involved in the process — the prospective trustees will get a ‘taste’ of the work they will be involved in while the recruitment team will get a first-hand view of how the prospective trustee functions.
- Be extremely mindful of designing the recruitment process for diversity and inclusivity rooted in the ecosystem that your non-profit functions in — think of the societal privileges/exclusions that exist in the general culture.
I would like to cite an experience shared by a fellow participant — when they were recruiting for trustees in a culture where women generally undersell themselves (which is true in most parts of the world really), they made sure to interview ALL the women candidates to account for the fact that in that culture it was highly likely that the women applicants might have been underselling themselves for the position.
- There is a lot of scope for innovating upon the recruitment process. Don’t shy away from designing innovative ways of recruiting — but maintain the rigor in the process. For example — how about you invite video applications?
- While you are setting out to design the recruitment process, don’t think of it as a process with a definite start and a definite end — rather think of it as ‘pipelines’.
Idea proposition (personal, not mentioned in the conference): How about we have a feature called ‘observer trustees’ — something similar to the concept of ‘observer states’ in diplomatic groupings? This would be sort of an amalgamation of participation, training, and recruitment — participatory recruitment!
- Thoroughly go through all the legalities (governing documents, laws etc) of the trustee recruitment process in your country of operation. This is a MUST — both for recruiting and onboarding trustees.
A few points to remember with respect to interviewing:
Design the process for accessibility. This is crucial so you can attract diversity.
Only a diverse recruiting team can recruit a diverse board. Ensure there is diversity on your trustee recruitment team.
Use set questions during interviews — go deeper if needed during the interview — but use the same set of questions as starting questions for every prospective trustee.
Make it a two-way interview process where the interviewees can also ask you some questions.
In the interview, do NOT assume or test for questions that can be easily learned.
Explain the entire process in advance and stick to it.
Help candidates be their best during the recruitment process. Design ways to offer that help/support.
Design for an interviewer’s notes booklet where each interviewer records their comments, observations, etc in a similar format — a pre-defined format.
- Have the ENTIRE recruitment process planned to a T, BEFORE you open up for applications. This is crucial!
Decide who would do the shortlisting.
Decide the metrics you would look at for shortlisting. While there is always some subjectivity that will inevitably creep in, put some thought and effort into making the shortlisting and interviewing metrics as scientific and objective as possible. This can be tricky!
Ensure that your shortlisting criteria doesn’t in some way disadvantage the groups you are trying to attract.
While designing the shortlisting criteria, have clarity on the distinction between essential versus desirable criteria.
While shortlisting trustees and defining our impact as a trustee can be tricky, these points might make the process easier.
Thanks to Siddhant Chandra for his inputs in writing this article. Thanks to Sivaranjani Subramanian and Jitheshraj Scholarship for promising freshmen for providing me the opportunity to attend the session and AHEAD Trust for sponsoring it.
About the author:
Darshana V is an Associate at the Jitheshraj Scholarship for promising freshmen, an initiative by the AHEAD Trust. Darshana is involved in the Engineering team and the Panelist Relations team. She is a current student at NIT Trichy.
