Deciding to join a charity – whether as a trustee, volunteer, or advisor – can be one of the most rewarding ways to contribute your time and expertise. But before you commit, it’s essential to understand what you’re joining.
A thoughtful “health check” helps ensure the organisation is operating effectively – and that you’re clear on how much work might be needed to strengthen its governance, strategy, or operations once you’re involved or can assess for yourself what the challenges a charity is facing.
In practice, this means assessing a number of things:
- Whether the charity is operating as it should,
- Any gaps or challenges,
- Any positive indicators (be sure to give credit where it is due!).
All factors can apply simultaneously and intersect – the balance simply depends on the charity’s size, maturity, and context.
Below are some practical steps and trusted resources to help you gather insight, shape your questions, and make an informed decision about whether a charity is the right fit for you.
1. Start with the Public Record
The Charity Commission register should always be your first stop. Each charity’s page includes its Trustee Annual Reports and Accounts – and reading at least the past three years’ worth can tell you a great deal.
These documents reveal:
- Financial stability and income trends
- Strategic priorities and how effectively they’re being delivered
- Trustee composition, tenure, and turnover
- The organisation’s tone of accountability and transparency
Patterns over time often speak louder than any single year’s data. Consistent, reflective reporting is a sign of good governance; gaps or vague language may signal weaker internal control or lack of direction.
2. Build a Broader Picture
The Charity Commission’s Register of Charities is essential, but it’s not the whole story. Supplement your review with the following sources for a deeper perspective:
- Giving is Great: Offers historical data and comparative insights into finances, impact, and performance.
- 360Giving: Provides open data on funding sources and grant recipients, helping you assess financial resilience and diversification.
- Glassdoor: While anecdotal, staff reviews can offer useful glimpses into culture and leadership behaviour – especially if consistent themes appear.
Don’t forget to review the charity’s own website and any recent news coverage. A healthy organisation communicates clearly about its purpose, people, and progress.
3. Key Red Flags and Positive Indicators
When analysing reports and filings, consider the following governance, financial, and cultural markers:
Governance and Compliance
- Late or missing filings with the Charity Commission: Possible compliance or governance issues. Be particularly cautious of and avoid double defaulters, where reporting is significantly late or has gaps for two consecutive years- especially if recent, unexplained and drawing regulatory scrutiny.
- Number of trustees: Ideally between 5 and 12, in line with the Charity Governance Code.
- Length of service: Trustees serving more than nine years, may suggest power imbalance or stagnation.
- High trustee turnover: Often a sign of board conflict or poor leadership.
- Regulatory notices or investigations: Check for warnings or compliance flags on the Commission entry.
Financial Health
- Repeated operating deficits: Review the data and any explanations, consider how significant these are and is there a credible plan to recover.
- Reserves policy: Ensure it’s clear, proportionate, and actually adhered to (typically 3-6 months of operating costs for small to medium charities, although if they have employees may be more).
- Excessive reserves: Could signal underutilised funds or poor delivery capacity.
- Single-source funding dependency: Poses sustainability risks, is there a feasible plan to move away from this model and diversify revenue streams?
- Many connected party transactions: Frequent payments to trustees or related persons (all must be disclosed) warrant scrutiny unless they are for reasonable expenses.
Strategy, Culture and Impact
- No visible strategy, values statement or clear impact interrogation: Suggests a reactive, short-term oriented culture or barriers to impact.
- Frequent restructures or redundancies: May point to unstable planning or weak governance oversight.
- Lack of board diversity: Homogeneous boards risk groupthink and may lack the breadth of perspective and critical lived experience needed for robust decisions.
4. Evaluate the Opportunity
If you’re considering a trustee role, review the advert carefully. A good one should be transparent about expectations, time commitments, and the organisation’s governance structure. Compare it with Reach Volunteering’s sample trustee role descriptions to check for clarity and best practice.
Reflect on:
- Does this align with my skills, interests, and availability?
- Is there a clear distinction between governance and operational work?
- Can I add value to strategic decision-making and more generally?
5. Assess Responsiveness and Culture in Conversation
How a charity engages with you before you join speaks volumes. Look for responsiveness, openness, and honesty when you ask questions or request more information.
If an informal chat is offered – take it. It’s an opportunity to get a sense of culture and communication style whilst learning more about the charity.
Ask questions drawn from your research – for example, about funding mix, board composition, or lessons learned from recent challenges. The way people, particularly leadership, respond to constructive scrutiny can be telling. In a high-functioning board, disagreement feels safe, transparency is routine, and challenge is constructive. Avoidance, defensiveness or vagueness suggest red flags; transparency, constructiveness and curiosity are positive indicators.
Final Thoughts
Doing due diligence on a charity isn’t about catching them out – it’s about understanding where they are on their journey and how your skills can help them progress.
A little research upfront can save frustration later and ensure that when you do step into a role, you are doing so with clarity, confidence, and purpose.
That’s good for you – and even better for the cause you care about.
Guidance On Governance* is a new series focusing on the practicalities of non-profit governance from Sharma On Governance, Suneet Sharma’s non-profit governance hub. Its aim is to help those who engage charities and are part of charities with practical and actionable governance insights.
*All scenarios and guidance are generalised to protect confidentiality and ensure sensitivity.
Leave a Reply