Board confidence through consistency
Ben Wittenberg, Director of Development and Delivery at DSC, takes a closer look at our recent Governance App Report. In this article he discusses scores around integrity, which was the highest scoring of the 7 governance areas - “We have appropriate and regularly reviewed safeguarding policies and procedures” was a lower scoring question though.
In October we produced a report drawing on the responses from over 1,000 governance reviews that had been carried out using DSC’s Governance App (a fantastic free tool designed for Boards to assess their performance against key elements of the Governance Code, and make having discussions about how and where to improve as easy as possible).
Click here to read the full report, and click here to check out the Governance App.
In this series of short blogs we’re digging a little deeper into the individual sections of the report, highlighting specific questions where trustees are scoring themselves particularly low, and giving some quick, practical and easy to implement tips and advice.
Most challenging areas
Integrity scored the highest among seven governance areas, with an average score of 8.8/10. This indicates strong confidence in honesty, trustworthiness, and adherence to values. However, the lowest-scoring question in this area was:
- “We have appropriate and regularly reviewed safeguarding policies and procedures” at 8.2, a notable gap given its critical importance.
While overall scores were strong, there was a clear challenge in ensuring safeguarding procedures are not just in place but effectively implemented and reviewed.
Tips to improve performance
- Establish a Review Schedule:
A lot of the Charity Governance Code refers to timeframes like “regularly”. This makes sense from a guidance perspective as different charities will have different needs, but for your organisation it’s important to define “regularly” for you (e.g., biannually or annually) and schedule reviews of your safeguarding policy so that they can be carried out (in meetings or outside of them), and then minuted, documented and stored where they can be accessed when required.
Depending on the size of your organisation it may make sense to assign a safeguarding officer or trustee to lead these efforts and report updates consistently.
- Focus on Implementation:
Beyond having policies, ensure they are active and understood by staff and volunteers. Is your safeguarding policy included in your induction plans for staff, volunteers and trustees? Are some staff more or less aware of the policy, what is in it and what it means for them?
When was the policy last briefed to all staff? Can you reference that and be confident that it was fully briefed and understood?
- Strengthen Reporting Mechanisms:
As part of your policy there needs to be a confidential and transparent process for reporting safeguarding concerns, and that process needs to be sufficiently robust to enable any trustee-related safeguarding concerns to be investigated and addressed as well.
Regular reporting is important even if no incidents are reported, and if regularly minuted can demonstrate that the Board takes safeguarding seriously.
- Keep your fundraising/grants team in the loop
In many organisations the fundraising team will be using, sharing and referring to the safeguarding policy more than anyone – as part of making applications and reporting progress to funders. Enable them to give meaningful information to prospective funders that includes not just the actual policy, but when it was last updated, when it will be reviewed next, what reporting against it looks like, and details of how the policy may have helped to resolve any issues.
Want to boost your governance? Join the thousands of trustees that we’ve helped:
Carry out a free governance review using our Governance App – click here to find out how
Get all of your trustees a copy of our bestselling book It’s a Battle on the Board – click here for details
Speak to our In-House team about how we can facilitate Board discussions and away days – click here to get in touch
