I'm often asked by client’s what skills should their board of trustees have, and the honest answer is “it depends!

The guidance from the Charity Commission is not specific as there is no prescribed list of skills that a charity needs. The nearest that the Charity Commission gets to advising a charity in this area is telling them to create a job specification for the trustees and specifying what skills they are looking to recruit.

Consequently, it is left very much up to the charity itself to create a board with the necessary skill sets to suit their needs. In my experience I have never yet found a board of trustees that have all the talents to meet that particular charity needs.

Consider the following list of skills which is nowhere near exhaustive:

• Finance
• Legal
• Property
• Governance
• Investments
• Mental health
• Carers
• Education
• Fund raising
• Business
• Social media
• Safeguarding
• Risk
• Health and safety
• HR
• Marketing
• Retail

Depending on the size of the charity and the area of public benefit that the charity works in, it is extremely unlikely that all these skills (as well as others depending on the specialist nature of the charity might require)are present. In addition, the number of trustees prescribed by its constitution could impact on some skills gaps.

As a result, each charity needs to decide which skills are vital within a board of trustees and which, if necessary, can be bought in as and when needed. For example, most charities need some degree of finance expertise within their board, but the question is just how qualified must that expertise be? Does every board of trustees need a qualified accountant or just someone who understands financial reports? For a very small charity that could be a bookkeeper, a bank manager or perhaps a local businessperson.

Likewise does every board of trustees need legal expertise? Consider how often your charity needs legal advice. Whilst it might be nice to have a lawyer on tap for some free advice, does that lawyer have the expertise to advise in that particular area of law?

For a children's or an age related charity clearly safeguarding could be it a key issue but if the charity concerned is merely making grants to charities in this area, do you really need the safeguarding expertise? A mental health or a carers charity needs someone on the board who understands the condition whether it is a counsellor or someone who has personal experience of the condition. The same might apply to a disability charity or one researchng into a particular disease ot illness but which skill is more needed?

As you can see it is very much horses for courses. Each charity must regularly review its trustee’s skill sets to see where the gaps are so that when next recruiting a new trustee you might consider sacrificing one skill for another that is more pressing. The best example of this in recent years is boards of trustees who struggle to understand the best way of their charity utilising social media. That is because only in recent years have such skills have become more important to every charity. Likewise in larger charities risk has become a much more central part of any charities day-to-day activities and having a trustee who understands what risk looks like for that charity is getting to be more important.

So, to sum up, it is vital that each charity looks at its skill sets on a regular basis and decides for itself what the priorities are for that charity They can then change the makeup of its board of trustees accordingly to meet its needs going forward.