Trustee Boards
Transitioning from Executive Committees to Trustee Boards
Good governance is a key factor to our success at group, district and county level, it enables our teams to ensure that local scouting is complying with our policies, organisation and rules, UK law, and the Charity Commission’s regulations. It also supports everyone to providing exciting programmes and experiences for our members.
Over the past few years, the good practice and regulations set by the Charity Commission has been significantly changed and in order to be compliant we need to change too. To achieve this, we are moving from Executive Committees to Trustee Boards. But this isn’t just a name change, it also changes the team’s purpose, responsibilities and how your group will function. There’s a need to make several changes including changes to group, district and county constitutions.
To bring our current structure in line with the good practice guidance set out by the charity regulators there are two key areas of change:
Executive Committees become Trustee Boards, and Executive Members are called Trustees
Being clear about trusteeship
Every member of an Executive Committee already acts as a charity trustee. The renaming gives greater clarity on this.
Making the change aligns with guidance from charity regulators and helps Trustee Boards meet their governance responsibilities as charity trustees.
It also aims to help us recruit new volunteers by making roles and responsibilities easier to understand, and helping volunteers to get involved in a way that works for their skills, interests and availability.
From April 2023, we’ll rename Executive Committees Trust Boards and Executive Committee Members as Trustees.
Trustee roles in Compass
Until we launch the new membership system, Compass will continue to show volunteers as Executive Committee Members.
Why is this changing?
- To align with good practice guidance from the charity regulators
- To help reinforce the purpose of Trustee Boards and focus on the role and responsibilities of being a charity Trustee
When is this changing?
- From publication of Policy, Organisation & Rules (POR) in mid-April 2023 onwards
This renaming happens from the release of POR and does not need to be adopted or approved through AGMs.
You don’t have to wait for your AGM to start using the new names. For example, you can start re-labelling meetings and agendas as ‘Trustee Board meetings’.
What will be the changes in POR?
- The July 2023 edition of POR references Trustee Boards and Trustees instead of Executive Committees and Executive Committee members respectively, in all chapters
What will this look like in practice?
Some areas will be for trustees to be confident that they are being done. This is different from doing it themselves!
Some areas will be for trustees themselves collectively to do. These are the core governance tasks.
This means that ‘operational’ tasks such as maintaining the scout hut, or the day-today running of the campsite, fundraising and similar are managed through the Group Leadership Team, or the Support Team in a District or County.
These operational tasks can be carried out by people who are also Trustees, however, they will be managed under the relevant team rather than in their Trustee role.
