Good Governance Case Study

York House Community Centre

York House Centre is an established and well used Youth, Community and Arts Centre in Stony Stratford.

It is both a charity and a charitable company limited by guarantee and is governed by a board of eight trustees, supported by 4 part time members of staff.

The board has a healthy gender and age balance but currently has no representation from the BAME community. Many of the trustees are long serving and almost all of them are semi-retired or retired. Each trustee has a ‘portfolio’ area of work that they are responsible for including marketing, staffing, infrastructure and IT.

York House Centre were fortunate to be approached by local company, Mercedes-Benz Financial Services, who wanted to support a local community organisation as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility, whilst gaining development for their staff. It was the professional business-like and openness of the running of the centre, plus the centre’s relationship with other organisations in the town, which attracted MBFS to invest a huge amount of time and effort. The collaboration has resulted in a number of physical improvements to the building, and enabled professional review of documents and policies, marketing support and preparation of a new long term business plan.

We spoke to Ken Daniels, Chair of the trustees of York House to get his top tips for improving governance:

• Consider having defined roles for each trustee, ideally in an area they have experience or professional expertise in
• Develop leadership by focusing on strategic decision making. Trustees are often busy people so will appreciate smooth systems for information sharing and decision making
• Ensure you have a skilled treasurer who can work with any staff to oversee financial management and  prepare accounts
• Create transparency through regular communication with members, users and supporters
• Keep meetings short by ensuring proposals are circulated well in advance and everyone knows what options for decision making are being proposed
• Consider trying to break down the perception that being a trustee is time consuming and that you need knowledge and experience. This should help with recruitment
• Bear in mind the importance of succession planning so that knowledge and experience can be passed on and not lost
• Provide formal or in-house training

The board find it essential to regularly assess their vulnerabilities in order to inform their planning. Their current assessment looks like this:

• Competition from other organisations, both commercial and charitable.
• Changes in demographics and economic climate, affecting usage,
• recruitment of volunteers.
• Changes in economic climate affecting availability of grants and other
• sources of income.
• Demographics affecting, for example, BAME volunteers and trustees.
• Difficulties in recruiting younger (ie under 50s) trustees and volunteers,
• thereby threatening succession planning.
• Perceptions about what is involved in being a trustee or volunteer,
• including knowledge, experience and time.
• In the case of York House Centre, the age and condition of the Grade II
• listed building.

http://york-house.org.uk