Governance and Management

The role of the governing body is to ensure that the organisation meets its aims.  To do this, the governing body must see to it that the organisation is effective and well run.

 

Governance is about setting and safeguarding long term direction

Management is about operational details such as supervising people and developing work-plans.

The more staff an organisation employs the more the governing body (e.g. management committee) should focus on governance and delegate management to them.

 

In a smaller or newly formed organisation the voluntary management committee may be directly involved in the frontline work of the organisation as well as the governing of it.  If a voluntary organisation employs staff, the staff should handle the day-to-day work of the organisation.  The voluntary management committee has responsibility for the overall governance and direction of the organisation.

It is important to take time to be clear about the separate roles and responsibilities of the voluntary management committee and staff.  There should be clear policies and systems for staff to be able to report back decisions and activities to the voluntary management committee and staff should be a partnership.  The legal liabilities of each should be explained to the persons concerned.


On the principle that is not a good idea to reinvent the wheel, we would suggest that you go to the excellent Governance section of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) website www.scvo.org.uk/governance/Home/Home.aspx.  This website includes a lot of useful searchable information, together with a number of downloadable publications, including the following:

  • Your Mission Governance:  An introductory leaflet
  • Your Mission Governance Wallchart
  • Your Mission Governance Introductory Text
  • Your Mission Governance Checklists
  • Getting to Grips with Governance

In addition, MVA hold a number of publications on Governance in their Resource Room.

 

 

If the above links do not work, go to www.scvo.org.uk/governance/GovernanceHome/Resources.aspx

The SCVO Governance website also includes a section Be a Trustee which includes information on what a Trustee does and also a searchable database of Trustee vacancies.

 

See Also:

 

Note:  all the information on this website applies to organisations based in and/or operating in Scotland.