The Governance App: Findings and Trends 2024 - Press release

Analysing the responses of over 1,000 users of DSC’s Governance App, the report outlines how charity trustees feel their boards are performing against key elements of the Charity Governance Code, and makes recommendations to umbrella bodies, funders and boards about how to address the challenges they are facing.

Key findings

Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion is the biggest challenge facing boards

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) was the governance area app users scored lowest overall. Three aspects of EDI scored particularly low: engaging in learning and reflection, leading organisational progress on EDI, and monitoring EDI targets.

Charities with lower income rate their performance lower

Users in organisations with less income recorded lower governance scores, when compared to organisations with higher income. This was particularly evident for the governance areas of EDI, and Board Effectiveness.

Trustees have differing views on their performance in key areas

Overall, questions about Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) had the highest variance between scores (and least consensus between users). Compared to other governance areas, user opinions were more acutely split between those that felt their board was performing well in this area, and those that found it more challenging.

Openness and Accountability was the second most divisive governance topic after EDI. Governance policies around publishing staff remuneration had the least consensus between users.

Integrity was the governance area that had the lowest variance (and highest consensus) between user scores. Other high scoring areas, such as Leadership and Organisational Purpose also showed relatively high levels of consensus between user scores. App users agreed that their boards were meeting high standards across these three governance areas.

Trustees’ confidence in integrity is high

Overall, Integrity was the governance area with the highest user scores, with 100% of the questions about integrity receiving an average user score above eight out of ten. The app scores showed that ‘acting with honesty, trustworthiness and care’ was the specific aspect of integrity that app users felt their organisations did best.

Confidence in Organisational Purpose, Integrity and Leadership is high, receiving overall average scores of 8.2/10 with 70% of questions scoring an 8 or above.

Openness and Accountability was the second-lowest scoring governance area for users of DSC’s Governance App. Publishing staff salaries and stakeholders holding the board to account were two particularly low-scoring questions related to openness and accountability.

DSC Chief Executive, author of the bestselling It’s a Battle on the Board publication and expert in charity governance Debra Allcock Tyler says:

‘The Governance App is a fantastic tool to help individual boards to understand and imporve their governance, but this report gives us a fantastic picture of the performance of charity boards across the sector. Being able to evidence the specific areas where most boards feel their are performing well or poorly, and where they disagree on their performance, is the first step towards regulators, umbrella bodies and boards themselves being able to accurately target the help boards need.’

About this report

This report presents and analyses data from a sample of 1,126 users who completed a full governance review between August 2021 and May 2024 using DSC’s Governance App, a free online tool that enables trustees to assess their effectiveness in the seven areas of the Charity Governance Code. It was created and developed by DSC with support from Clothworkers Company, Lloyds Band Foundation, The Tudor Trust, and The National Lottery Community Fund.

Trustees and executive teams were asked to rate how much they disagreed or agreed with 70 statements about their organisation’s governance practices on a scale of 0 (disagree) to 10 (agree).

The data provides useful insights in to how confidently trustees and executive teams felt that their organisations was meeting the highest standards around seven governance areas which directly match those of the Charity Governance Code: Organisational Purpose, Integrity, Leadership, Board Effectiveness, Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), Openness and Accountability and Decision-making, and Risk and Control.

The report uses self-reported, subjective data; however, it provides a unique insight from thousands of individual trustees and senior charity leaders on areas of governance in which users felt their organisations were doing well or where they felt areas were more challenging.

The full report can be downloaded here.

For more information please contact Ben Wittenberg at [email protected]