Role
In small voluntary organisations, those entrusted with the governance function (the governing body or board of trustees) are expected to carry out both governance functions and to also perform other roles within the organisation. Core functions are:
- To ensure that the charity remains true to its mission and values
- To determine its strategy
- To act as the point of final accountability for its actions and those of its representatives and staff
- To safeguard its assets
When the organisation employs staff, the governing body undertakes the management role of hiring, firing and holding the head of staff accountable. Another role is as liaison between the organisation and the outside world: providing a conduit for information and ideas, representing it and acting as an ambassador for it.
In addition to these governance functions, trustees of small charities may also be expected to:
- Act as a pool of expertise and advice, making this available to staff and volunteers
- Manage one (or more) staff, volunteers or projects (for instance, managing the work of the coordinator or production of the newsletter)
- Carrying out the work of the organisation: staffing a helpline, answering correspondence and so on
The literature typically restricts its coverage to “pure” governance functions; it does not pay attention to these other functions which are carried out by the trustees of small charities, seen by staff, volunteers and committee members as the contribution made by them to the organisation.
Read more about this topic: Small Charity Governance
Famous quotes containing the word role:
“The trouble is that the expression ‘material thing’ is functioning already, from the very beginning, simply as a foil for ‘sense-datum’; it is not here given, and is never given, any other role to play, and apart from this consideration it would surely never have occurred to anybody to try to represent as some single kind of things the things which the ordinary man says that he ‘perceives.’”
—J.L. (John Langshaw)
“Mental health data from the 1950’s on middle-aged women showed them to be a particularly distressed group, vulnerable to depression and feelings of uselessness. This isn’t surprising. If society tells you that your main role is to be attractive to men and you are getting crow’s feet, and to be a mother to children and yours are leaving home, no wonder you are distressed.”
—Grace Baruch (20th century)
“Where we come from in America no longer signifies—it’s where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we are.
The irony of the role of women in my business, and in so many other places, too, was that while we began by demanding that we be allowed to mimic the ways of men, we wound up knowing we would have to change those ways. Not only because those ways were not like ours, but because they simply did not work.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)