It’s Trustees' Week this week, when we celebrate the great work that boards do to support and lead charities across the UK. At Pilotlight’s Governance Insight event on Tuesday 8 November, we heard two sector experts discussing their observations and experiences around a particularly thorny area of governance: charity mergers.
In the current world of increasing need and shrinking funding, small charities in particular are struggling to create sustainable business models – and as a result are facing the reality of having to cut essential services. This problem is compounded by a proliferation of charities with very similar missions, leading to the double blow of organisations duplicating activities while unnecessarily increasing competition for funding.
This means that trustees should be having a regular and ongoing conversation about whether standing alone will result in the best outcomes for the people they support.
All trustees have a responsibility (and a legal duty) to make sure that they are acting in the best interest of their charity and ultimately the beneficiaries they serve. At our event Beryl Hobson, Director of Professional Governance Services and former Head of the Large Charities Division at the Charity Commission, told us that this means that trustees should be having a regular and ongoing conversation about whether standing alone will result in the best outcomes for the people they support. We heard about a board that Beryl sat on where trustees were given a briefing every two years on the organisations working on a similar issue, and which of those might be an appropriate prospect for a merger.
This offers a great model for all boards to aspire to, to make sure that if the time comes to merge with another organisation, both Chair and Chief Executive are in a strong position to make an informed decision on who to engage.
We also had a salient reminder that trustees are responsible for managing mergers with other charities, and are held accountable for their success or failure. Sam Matthews, Director of Delivery at Leap Confronting Conflict and former CEO of Charity Evaluation Services, spoke about her experience of the merger between CES and NCVO, which was successfully delivered through close collaboration between the CEOs, Chairs and trustees of both organisations.
For many charities mergers can be a scary proposition. But, as ever, all charities exist to benefit and help those in need, and there may be times when the best way to do this is by joining forces with others working to achieve the same goal.
More information about mergers can be found in the Good Merger Guide, and in the Charity Commission’s Guidance and good merger checklist.
