“I think of the Board as a lighthouse”
As a charity, we too have a Board of Trustees to guide and support our Chief Executive. To mark this year’s Trustees’ Week, we have asked our Chief Executive, Chantal Hughes, to share her thoughts…
…on what having Trustees means to her:
“In my position as CEO, as much as I try to collaborate with the teams and support them, it can be quite a lonely place. Without the Board of Trustees, I think I’d sometimes be a bit lost at sea. I think of the Board as a lighthouse: They’re there to steer me, but they leave me to sail around. They trust me, but they’re there to support and back me up. They’re also a sounding board and hold me accountable. I can’t imagine them not being there; I’d probably be very reluctant to be in a leadership position without that.”
…on when Hampton Trust’s Trustees have positively pushed the organisation:
“We talk a lot about the structure of the organisation. It can get very bogged down in financial sustainability, but I think that’s the nature of the third sector. You’re always thinking about contracts, recommissioning, grant funding, and what the landscape looks like. But amidst all that, the most valuable asset is our staff. Although we’ve grown in the last few years, this can still be daunting because our income might have increased, but our outgoings have quadrupled at the same time.
“I am very focused on making us financially secure and not spending too much money. I can think of an example from last year when the Trustees were pushing me to increase the senior management team, and I was worried about increasing our overheads. But it was getting to a point where our team was becoming ineffective. The Trustees pushed me to increase the senior team in line with the growing workload. If they hadn’t been there, at what point would it have been detrimental to the organisation? They don’t intervene all the time, but when they do stage an intervention, it’s at the point where it’s needed and done with such positivity, support and care.”
…on when she has actively sought their advice:
“I’ve reached out to them for recruitment for certain roles. Their input and their being part of the interview panel has been really helpful. I can think of a role where I was probably making the job description a bit too broad, but there was a particular Trustee who knew from her background the skill set we needed. She knew far more about a governance-type role than I would have known, so what she brought to the process in terms of assessing candidates and talking it through with me was really helpful.”
…on the qualities a trustee should have to be successful in a Trustee role:
“I think there’s a mix of qualities, attitudes, and values. Fundamentally, they have to believe in the ethos of the organisation. In our case, that’s working with the root cause of domestic abuse and offending behaviour. I think you’ve got to have a sense that they believe in what the charity is trying to achieve.
“I know that can sound obvious, but sometimes people might just think “I want to be a trustee” without considering whether it’s a good fit with their values. I also think there needs to be curiosity about what you do as a charity and a willingness to question some of what you’re doing in a way that helps you reflect.
“On a practical level, it makes sense if you have a Board with varied backgrounds. I think it helps if people have experience of the charity sector and understand the mechanics and challenges it brings. But similarly, a business analyst from a corporate background has their value too. And lived experience is always going to be valuable.
“What you also need with the Board, which is so obvious but not always easy to achieve, is diversity. In an ideal world, your Board should be made up of people with varied lived experiences, varied characteristics, and cultural differences. But that’s not always easy.”
…on whether age matters:
“I don’t think age matters. Younger trustees bring a different perspective. We recently recruited somebody in their twenties, which is very unusual in the history of the organisation. What they bring – already in the couple of conversations I’ve had – is a different perspective, a different view, and a whole different skill and talent set. If you think about their education, somebody who’s eighteen or nineteen and has gone through recent education in all its forms, it’s very different to mine. I think that’s really positive.”
…on recruiting Trustees in an open process:
“I was surprised at the level of interest. I think volunteering in its broadest sense is probably not as easy to achieve as it has been in the past. When I recruited volunteers for frontline roles years ago, it was always easier. People now have different lives, different commitments; they’re busy. But I was surprised at the response we got and at the people who had so much valuable experience and skills. We ended up recruiting more than we originally intended, but they were really valuable, robust applicants. I didn’t want them to pass us by.
“I think people who don’t work in the charity sector don’t appreciate how challenging it is. It feels like a corporate business model that provides statutory services – drastically different to a local authority, social care, or policing in terms of what we are required to have in place to survive. So people with business backgrounds are really valuable.
“But we have also appointed people with lived experience, people aware of our service either directly or indirectly through their experience. That’s invaluable, too.”
