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Thank you for your invaluable ‘pathways’ work on the Charity Commission guidance.
Theresa Beattie OBE
Whether you have been exploring becoming a trustee, need to have an awareness of governance as a member of charity staff, are considering a move into governance as a career or are simply trying to make sense of what good charity governance looks like in practice – you are in the right place. Everything here is written from my practice of governance, as a trustee, governance manager and consultant across over five charities.
This page is a curated starting point. I have put together three suggested pathways depending on where you are coming from: Trustee | Staff | Governance Professional. Work through the steps in order, or dip in and out as your questions arise to get a introductory understanding of charity governance, how it applies to you and how to navigate governance effectively.
I appreciate you have limited time and resource so you can use each step as a topical spot-check on each subject. Each article takes up to 5 minutes to read with each pathway taking about 20-30 minutes to read.
Everything here is free.
Once you have worked through these pathways, the Guidance on Governance series covers specific governance topics in depth as you encounter them in practice.
Before you begin
If you want one document that gives you the complete picture of how governance works in a non-profit context, start here, the 10 P’s framework. The one-pager takes about 10 minutes to read and will give you a framework – the 10P model – that makes everything else on this site easier to navigate and translates charity governance to impact. An additional article on politics covers common failure modes in governance.
If you are considering engaging with a charity in another capacity – as a volunteer, advisor, or supporter – I recommend starting with the health-check guide, which will help you assess the charity before committing your time in just 20 minutes.
Pathway 1 – I am new to trusteeship or considering becoming a trustee (25 minutes total read time)
These resources take you from understanding what trusteeship involves, through to how to assess a charity before joining, and how to be effective once you are on the board.
Step 1: Understand what you are taking on
Insights on Trusteeship – an interview on preparing for and navigating trustee life
An honest first-person account of what trusteeship actually involves – preparing for your first role, what to expect in your early months, and how to make the most of the experience. Particularly useful if you are considering your first trustee position and want a realistic picture before committing.
Step 2: Assess a charity before you join
Guidance On Governance: How to Health-Check a Charity
Before you commit to a trustee role, it is worth understanding what you are joining. This post walks through the practical steps for assessing a charity’s governance health – from reading its Trustee Annual Reports to asking the right questions at interview. It is the most useful pre-joining resource on the blog.
Step 3: Understand the regulatory landscape
Guidance On Governance: Navigating the Charity Commission Guidance
The Charity Commission publishes 178 pieces of guidance. This post tells you how to navigate that landscape efficiently – which codes matter most, where to start depending on your question, and which resources are most useful for new trustees. Read this before you attempt to read the Commission’s guidance directly. A critical piece of guidance to start with is then CC3 the Essential Trustee.
Step 4: Be an effective trustee in practice
Guidance On Governance: An Eight-Step Guide to Being an Effective Trustee in a Small or Medium Charity
Drawing on direct experience as a trustee at two growing charities, this guide covers the practical realities of trustee life in smaller organisations – the dual role of strategist and doer, when to lean in and when to step back, and how to add genuine value from your first meeting onwards.
Step 5: Navigate a common governance challenge
Guidance On Governance: Navigating Conflicts of Interest – a Real-World Case Study
Conflicts of interest are one of the most common and most mishandled governance situations new trustees encounter. This post walks through a real scenario – a chair proposing both a new CEO role and their own candidacy for it – and draws out the practical steps taken to protect the charity’s best interests.
Pathway 2 – I work for a charity and need to understand governance as part of my role (25 minutes total read time)
These resources are for charity staff who work alongside a board without sitting on it – CEOs, senior managers, fundraising leads, finance staff, operations managers, and anyone whose work is shaped by board decisions or who supports the board in any capacity. Understanding governance is not just for trustees and governance professionals. If you prepare board papers, implement board decisions, manage the relationship between staff and trustees, or are simply trying to understand why your organisation works the way it does, this pathway is for you.
Step 1: Understand what governance is and how it shapes your organisation
An Introduction to Non-Profit Governance – the 10P Framework
Start here if you have not already read it. Understanding how the ten elements of governance connect – and how the board oversees all of them – will give you a clear picture of where your own role sits within the wider governance structure and why decisions are made the way they are.
Step 2: Understand how the board thinks and operates
Guidance On Governance: How to Unlock the Impact of Effective Teamwork on Your Board
The board is not just a decision-making body – it is a team with its own dynamics, relationships, and culture. This post examines how effective boards operate, what gets in the way, and how the relationship between board culture and organisational effectiveness plays out in practice. Understanding this will make you significantly more effective in any role that involves working with or presenting to a board.
Step 3: Understand how Boards, Senior Leadership Teams and Staff work well together
Read how to work well together across Boards, SLT and Staff
From someone who has seen board’s work in practice across multiple charities. This will provide you with insight into tailoring your approach to the board and how to work with them effectively.
Step 4: Understand governance as a strategic driver, not a compliance burden
Beyond Compliance: Embedding Governance as a Strategic Enabler
One of the most common sources of friction between staff and boards is a mismatch in how each sees governance – staff often experience it as slow, bureaucratic, or obstructive, while boards see it as essential oversight. This piece reframes governance as a strategic enabler and gives both perspectives a common language. It is particularly useful if you are preparing to present to your board or are trying to make the case for a governance-related change in your organisation.
Step 5: Understand what trustee oversight looks like in practice
Guidance On Governance: Navigating Conflicts of Interest – a Real-World Case Study
Even if you are not a trustee, you will encounter governance challenges in your work – conflicts of interest, questions about decision-making authority, situations where the line between staff and board responsibilities becomes unclear. This post uses a real scenario to illustrate how those situations should be handled and what good governance looks like when it is being tested.
Pathway 3 – I am a governance professional or work in a governance support role (30–35 minutes total read time)
These resources are for people working in or moving into dedicated governance roles – governance assistants, governance officers, governance managers, company secretaries, board secretaries and those supporting a board in a professional or advisory capacity.
This pathway assumes you already accept that governance matters. It is about the craft of doing it: reading the regulatory landscape efficiently, exercising judgment when policy meets pressure, and being effective in a role where being right is rarely enough on its own.
Step 1: Understand what governance looks like from the inside
A Week in Governance – a practitioner diary
Most governance job descriptions describe the role. This post describes the reality – the competing priorities, the judgment calls, the relationship management, and the parts that only become clear once you are doing it.
Step 2: Understand what turns governance knowledge into effective practice
Knowledge, Observation, Insight and Influence – why being right usually isn’t enough in governance
The governance professional who is technically right but unable to influence an organisation may achieve less than the one who understands the dynamics at play. This post sets out what separates governance advice that is correct from governance advice that is acted upon. If you read one thing on this pathway, read this.
Step 3: Learn to read the politics
The unspoken 11th P of the 10P’s framework – politics, and navigating it in charities Power dynamics, pacing, information silos and deference to authority shape governance outcomes as much as any constitution does. This post makes the previous step concrete – how these forces surface in a board room, and what you can do about them from a governance seat.
Step 4: Navigate the regulatory landscape professionally
Guidance On Governance: Navigating the Charity Commission Guidance
Essential for anyone whose role involves interpreting or applying Charity Commission material. The explanation of the CC/OG/RS system turns a sprawling body of guidance into something you can search deliberately rather than read exhaustively.
Step 5: Exercise judgment when policy meets pressure
Ethical Governance in Practice: when ethics becomes evidence – and how to act on it
The gap between what a policy says and what an organisation does shows up when approaches are tested under pressure, and rarely in ways you can anticipate. This can be the hardest part of the role to learn and navigate.
Step 6: A difficult case from start to finish
Guidance On Governance: Navigating conflicts of interest – a real-world case study
A chair proposing both a new paid CEO role and his own candidacy for it. This post walks through the full sequence – how the conflict was managed, how an open recruitment process was built around it, and how the Charity Commission’s prior written consent was secured. Conflicts this severe are rare. The principles apply to every conflict you will handle.
Step 7: Handle the problems you inherit (optional)
Commitment and Continuity: navigating the delicate politics of succession on charity boards
Up to a third of trustees serve ten years or more. Succession is the governance problem you inherit rather than create, and one where the constitutional answer and the human answer rarely align neatly. Learn more about that here.
Free templates and resources
Alongside these posts, the blog’s Templates & Resources section includes a number of free, downloadable tools designed to be immediately usable in a charity context – including a conflicts of interest register, a risk management policy and register template, a SORP 2026 Trustee Annual Report checklist, and an introduction to governance guide. All are free to download and adapt for your own use.
Browse the Templates & Resources section
A note on this site
Everything on Sharma on Governance is written from direct practitioner experience – not from the sidelines. I write as someone who is actively working in governance management and consultancy with experience of trusteeship, not as someone who studies it from a distance.
If you have a question or a topic you would like to see covered, I welcome comments and enquiries, the contact page is always open.
All content is for information and commentary only and does not constitute legal advice. Where regulatory or legal questions arise in your governance work, please seek professional advice as appropriate.
