On this page: Accessible version · Why 10Ps · Board self-assessment · More on how to use it
Small charities do not lack governance guidance; they lack a simple, proportionate way of seeing how it all fits together. The 10Ps fills that orientation gap.
A map of charity governance in England and Wales for £10,000-£500,000 annual income charities, drawn from practitioner experience across six charities as trustee, governance manager, consultant, and in senior leadership.
Read it on day one to understand what governance is. Revisit it to check whether you’re practising it. Return to it as chair to check where the board has drifted. The same ten panels – three different conversations, transformed by what you have learned between them.
What the sector is saying:
“That’s a great tool Suneet Sharma. I can see how that could be brilliant to get trustees talking about their work.”
Penny Wilson, former CEO of Getting on Board, Festival of Trusteeship
“Succinct, self-explanatory and helpful in supporting good charity governance.”
Dom Charkin, Executive Coach, Trustee, former Charity CEO (Zest), Associate at Interims for Impact
Download the one-pager for free with an accessible version for screen readers below
Sharma on Governance Charity governance framework England & Wales
The 10 Ps of Charity Governance
A map for navigation, not a compliance checklist. Read P1 through to P10. Skim bolded elements for what’s universal. Read full panels for detail. Use board questions for discussion. Apply proportionately to your charity’s size and context.
Use alongside CC3 (The Essential Trustee), CC guidance, and the Charity Governance Code (2025).
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P 1
Principles
CC3 six core duties — the legal duties that the remaining 9 Ps put into practice
- Carrying out purposes for the Public Benefit
- Comply with the governing document and the law
- Act in the charity’s best interests
- Manage the charity’s resources responsibly
- Act with reasonable care and skill
- Ensure accountability to beneficiaries, donors and the public
Board question Can the board demonstrate — not just recite — how it discharges each of the six duties?
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P 2
Purpose
Mission clarity, values, public benefit and strategic direction. Trustees must be able to articulate what the charity exists to do — in plain language — and regularly test whether activities remain within charitable purposes and whether strategy is still the right expression of the mission. Have a theory of change.
Board question Is our strategy still the right expression of our mission — or have we drifted?
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P 3
Platform
Legal structure, governing document, charitable objects and regulatory registration. Managing conflicts of interest and related party transactions, trustee benefit and payment rules. Legal structure can affect trustee liability.
Board question Have all trustees read and understood our governing document?
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P 4
People
Recruit, induct and steward trustees, staff and volunteers with the right skills, EDI and commitment. Trustee eligibility and the disqualification declaration. Ensure beneficiary representation and stakeholder voice. Conduct a regular board skills audit, plan for succession, use EDI targets and foster psychological safety.
Board question Do we have the diversity, skills and lived experience needed today — and a plan for who we’ll need tomorrow?
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P 5
Policies
Approved, written standards for how the charity operates — financial controls, a safeguarding policy, data protection, whistleblowing, codes of conduct and ethics. Policies that are current, proportionate and embedded in practice, not filed and forgotten.
Board question When did the board last see evidence — not assurance — that key policies are actually working?
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P 6
Practice
Ethical behaviours and an inclusive culture. Constructive challenge, clear delegation framework and escalation routes. Collective, quorate and compliant decision making with reasoning recorded in minutes. In smaller charities trustees often work operationally — know which hat you’re wearing.
Board question Does our board challenge constructively — or do we defer rather than probe?
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P 7
Protection
Risk register, data governance, cyber security, technology and AI policy, insurance. Active risk ownership including external threats. Know what triggers a Serious Incident Report and file promptly. Safeguarding: practice, policy, designated leads and recruitment (DBS). Environmental and climate risks.
Board question Are our risks proportionate to our mission — and do we have genuine confidence in how they are being managed?
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P 8
Prudence
Scrutinise financial reports, set and justify reserves policy, maintain internal controls and steward assets. Oversee income strategy, financial sustainability and solvency. If fundraising from the public, apply fundraising governance and the Code of Fundraising Practice. Apply property/land/grant rules.
Board question Are our reserves adequate for the risks we carry — and do we have a credible plan if a major income stream fails?
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P 9
Public Accountability
Transparent reporting and timely filing of the annual report, accounts and annual return, with honest impact narratives to beneficiaries, funders and the regulator. Campaigning must further your charitable purposes, never party political. Know your regulators, accounting regime and independent examination thresholds.
Board question Are we meeting our reporting obligations — and does this honestly reflect our impact and challenges?
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P 10
Performance
Evaluate board effectiveness and iterate, using learning to drive continuous improvement. Structured beneficiary and stakeholder feedback as standard. Strategic review considers collaboration, merger, or planned closure and feeds back directly into Purpose cyclically.
Board question Does the board evaluate its own effectiveness regularly and rigorously?
The reasoning behind 10Ps – why a map to charity governance?
At the Festival of Trusteeship 2025, someone from a small charity asked me a question: what does good governance actually look like?
The 10Ps is my answer. It’s a map – not a checklist – for small charities in England and Wales thinking about how to govern well. Whether you’re building your governance from scratch, strengthening what’s already in place, or reviewing how far you’ve come, it gives you a structure for the conversation.
The Charity Commission publishes approximately 50 pieces of core guidance and over 100 supplementary documents. The 10Ps is the framework I built from me having lived that problem as a trustee and wishing I had had a tool like this to help me navigate those early stages and numerous pieces of guidance. It was then refined from direct practitioner experience across five charities, as a trustee, governance manager, consultant and in charity senior leadership.
If you’re a new trustee, don’t worry if some terms are unfamiliar. Read the headings first, then the bold text. The detail will make more sense as you gain experience.
The 10Ps builds upon my existing 6P model which itself formed from engaging with James Tulley’s P3 of People, Purpose and Place. It is scoped to charities with £10k-£500k income in England and Wales. The framework also scales with organisational complexity – apply it proportionately to your context.
It also forms a bridge to the Charity Governance Code, which sets best practice as your ceiling for continuous improvement. Noticeably, the 2025 Code replaced its separate smaller-charities edition with a single code for all. The 10Ps provides the bridge that the Code used to offer – from the legal baseline of Commission guidance toward the Code’s expectations. Here is a table for how the 10P’s map to each Charity Governance Code principle:
Charity Governance Code 2025 – 10Ps Mapping
1. Foundation principle
P1 Principles, P3 Platform
2. Organisational purpose
P2 Purpose, P10 Performance
3. Leadership
P2 Purpose, P4 People, P6 Practice
4. Ethics and culture
P5 Policies, P6 Practice, P9 Public Accountability
5. Decision making
P6 Practice, P10 Performance
6. Managing resources and risks
P7 Protection, P8 Prudence
7. Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
P4 People, P6 Practice
8. Board effectiveness
P4 People, P10 Performance
Self Assessment Tool
The self assessment tool below takes 60 minutes to complete collectively as a Board or individually as Chair, and helps you orientate yourself using the 10Ps map. Use it as a tool for discussion.
This self-assessment framework supports reflection and discussion. It is not a substitute for legal, financial, safeguarding, audit, or regulatory assurance processes. Boards should test conclusions against evidence and external guidance where appropriate. Consider the 11th P piece below to surface more political factors.
The 10 P’s Board Self-Assessment
A short, structured prompt for trustee boards to assess governance against the 10 P’s framework. Rate each statement honestly — this is for board discussion, not a compliance test. A “Don’t know” or “N/A” answer is itself a useful finding. Complete as a Chair, or as a Board in 60 minutes.
Before you start. This is a self-perception map, not an assurance review — a high score signals confidence, not verified effectiveness. Designed for the full board to work through together: read each statement, brief discussion, agree a rating. Capture anything substantive in your board minutes, not in the tool. Allow around 50 minutes plus 10 for the summary, and save the PDF as a governance record. Treat any individual statement scored 1 or 2 as a finding in its own right, regardless of the overall RAG.
Your answers stay in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent to this website, stored, or seen by anyone else. That also means nothing is saved — if you close or reload this page, your ratings are gone. Generate and save the summary before you leave.
Overall: —
—Scores by P
Highest self-rated confidence
These are areas the board feels most assured about. The next board question is: what evidence backs that confidence?
Priority areas for the board
What this summary doesn’t tell you
- This is the board’s self-perception — not independent assurance. High confidence is not the same as verified effectiveness.
- Averaging within a P can mask one critical weakness. Read the per-statement ratings above before drawing comfort from a P-score.
- If this was completed by one person, you have one person’s view of the board — not the board’s view of itself. Compare individual responses where you can.
- The framework covers the major surfaces of governance, not all of them. Sector-specific risks, cyber, AI use, and live incidents may need their own conversation.
Prioritisation – more on how to use it for boards
The one-pager that explains governance across a charity’s key areas in 10 minutes. Hand it to a trustee to give them a starting point map.
P1 Principles sits above everything else as the legal foundation – it highlights the six core trustee duties that all nine remaining Ps put into practice.
The remaining nine Ps can fall into three groups, which is primarily to assist boards undertaking cyclical governance reviews without urgent governance issues:
Foundation – how you are constituted and who you are
P2 Purpose · P3 Platform · P4 People
Operation – how you govern day to day
P5 Policies · P6 Practice · P7 Protection
Accountability – how you demonstrate you’re governing well
P8 Prudence · P9 Public Accountability · P10 Performance
The framework moves clockwise from P1 through to P10 and back to P2 Purpose – because good governance is a continuous cycle of evaluation and return, not a destination you reach once and file away.
Each P includes a board question. Use these and the self-assessment questions, or vary them to your own context, in a board meeting, a governance review, or a trustee away day to help move from asking what good governance looks like to asking whether yours is working.
*10Ps Map, Published version 6.5, 23 August 2026. The framework is iterated as practice and sector guidance evolve as and when necessary. I welcome and collate feedback for periodic updates- if you have any feedback please do Contact Us. My thanks to those who provided feedback on previous versions: Fran Borg-Wheeler
