Trusteeship

We are committed to sustaining our root trade in cloth by supporting both innovation and conservation in textiles. However, most Clothworkers today do not participate in our historic craft, and we have sought to develop Trusteeship as an additional core purpose for The Company in the present day. We encourage members to use their professional skills as trustees for third sector organisations. Nearly half of the c170,000 charities in the UK have vacancies on their boards, and we have a passionate and talented membership capable of providing advice and leadership. We support our members in exploring these opportunities by promoting trustee vacancies and connecting Clothworkers to charitable organisations. We also sponsor opportunities for training and skills development.

Furthermore, we work with partners to support good governance across the industry. There are an estimated 820,000 charity trustees in the UK. They are responsible for ensuring that their charities are well run and fulfilling their charitable objectives.

Much has been done in the past decade to educate trustees on the importance of good governance, but there are still challenges to overcome, with many charities finding it difficult to recruit new trustees, offer proper induction or training, and effectively evaluate performance. We have begun a number of initiatives to solve these problems and become a champion of good governance across the charity sector.

We partnered with NPC (New Philanthropy Capital) to fund “Board Matters”, an investigation into challenges facing the third sector. The outcome was the discovery and articulation of the key areas the sector needs to address: increasing the pool of trustees, creating an effective matching service to bring individuals and charities together, coordinating access to appropriate information on trusteeship, funding research into best practices, and improving trustee boards’ performance.

We co-fund, with Close Brothers Asset Management, the Cause4 Trustee Leadership Programme in London. More than 500 would-be trustees have participated, many going on to serve as a trustee. In 2017, we extended the programme to include one-day seminars in

Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, and Glasgow. The programme has received accreditation from the Institute of Leadership Management.

We also have an evolving partnership with Reach Volunteering, supporting its TrusteeWorks service, which placed a record 473 trustees in 2017 (including 33 chairs).

Newer collaborations, in related areas, include our support for the development, consultation, and publication of the new Charity Governance Code. We are also in discussion with the highlyrespected Association of Chairs, with a view to assisting them to expand their reach, impact, and sustainability.

Finally, we have partnered with NPC, Prospectus, and Reach Volunteering to celebrate and reward good governance in the sector with our third annual Charity Governance Awards; the next awards ceremony will be held on 24th May 2018.