Governance - Overview and Access to Support
Governance is a key issue for the voluntary and community sector. It is ‘the systems and processes concerned with ensuring the overall direction, effectiveness, supervision and accountability of an organisation’.
In voluntary and community sector organisations, governance is provided by the board of trustees. This group oversees the organisation, making sure it fulfils its mission, lives up to its values and remains viable for the future.
To do this, the board sets up a variety of systems to control and monitor the organisation’s activity. It makes decisions along the way, altering the systems as needed. In doing this, the board carries out governance. For a summary of what the board needs to do to govern an organisation responsibly, see the 12 key board responsibilities.
Information sheets on: the responsibilities of the management committee, the roles of the Chair, Scretray and Treasurer, and many other aspects of running an organisation are available from the Resource Centre online at www.resourcecentre.org.uk/information or call 01273 606160.
Business Community Partnership brokers free professional advice and support through their Pro-Help scheme. Call 01273 770075 or www.bhbcp.org.uk
Working Together Project provides briefing sessions for managment committe members and trustees and can also provide skills needs and development analysis for boards of Trustees. Ring 01273 234 773 or go to www.workingtogetherproject,.org.uk for further information.
BHCI’sPerformance Development Service provides support to medium sized organisations that employ staff and provide services in the health, welfare and social care sector or work with socially excluded people. It offers skilled support to enable organisations to improve their management and governance systems thereby enabling them to deliver services more effectively.
- Improve your Board’s performance
- Business Planning and Strategy
- Monitoring & Evaluation and quality improvement
- Fundraising search through Funder Finder
- Support with funding strategies
- Organisational Health Check using PQASSO
- Organisation or Project Set Up
- Problem Solving and Crisis Intervention
- Policy / Procedure Development
- Management Development
They can be contacted on 01273 229000 or see www.bhci.org
The Community University Partnership Programme (CUPP) Research Helpdesk give advice and support to organisations on research issues. See http://www.brighton.ac.uk/cupp for more details or contact Polly Rodriguez, the Helpdesk Manager, on 01273 643229.
