This is what trustees need to do…

Follow the principles

Trustees will need to work together to make the best decisions for your charity.

Often there will not be a perfect solution but it must be an informed and responsible one for your situation.

The standard must be that your trustees:

  • act within their powers
  • act honestly and with good intentions, and only in your charity’s interests
  • be sufficiently informed, taking any advice needed
  • take account of all relevant factors
  • ignore irrelevant factors
  • manage conflicts of interest
  • make a decision that is within a range of decisions that a reasonable body of trustees can make.

These principles should always guide the approach. But make especially sure that your trustees can show that you have used them for decisions which are:

  • complex, or
  • high impact, or
  • involving significant money or other property, or
  • high risk

There are some practical things you can do and think about to support these principles so that your charity makes decisions correctly. We have summarised them here.

Read on