What makes a positive and engaged trustee board?

What makes a trustee board work well?

It’s a question worth asking at any time, but particularly when charities are navigating a complex and challenging environment.

As Chair of DSC, I’m fortunate to work with an extremely talented group of trustees, directors and staff. My professional and trustee lives have encompassed many different chairing experiences, not all of which have felt as positive and engaged as DSC’s.

So what are the critical ingredients that make this recipe work?

Here are four lessons from my experience that I think are worth reflecting on.

Value experience and executive expertise

First, is a recognition of the diverse experience and expertise that each of us bring.

This requires trustees to value and cherish executive expertise, to understand their role as creators of strategic options that enable the Board to make informed judgements, and to avoid requesting volumes of data that don’t contribute to our primary oversight role.

Robust and respectful challenge is therefore a critical ingredient in making our purposeful partnership work, as is a recognition of the need for trustees to stay at a ‘big picture’ level and avoid the temptation to dabble in operational matters that are primarily an executive prerogative.

How well does your board strike that balance between oversight and operational involvement?

Create an open feedback culture

Second, a positive and engaged Board needs an open and transparent feedback culture.

That means creating regular opportunities for trustees and directors to share their views, raise areas for improvement and think about what could be done differently. This might include structured opportunities for feedback on the Chair’s performance, as well as one-to-one conversations between the Chair and individual trustees.

These kinds of conversations can help Boards think about how they support contributions from quieter trustees, while also encouraging restraint from those who naturally have more to say.

And with many Boards now meeting virtually, it’s worth thinking about how you can create space for the conversations that happen more naturally around a physical table. Small breakout groups can give everyone an opportunity to contribute before feeding back into full Board discussions, while tools such as the chat function can help recreate some of those informal coffee-break conversations.

It’s also useful to have simple ways for trustees to stay engaged between Board meetings, whether that’s through agreed approaches to sharing information, informal conversations or creating more opportunities for trustees and staff to connect.

The important thing is to create a culture where people feel able to speak openly, challenge constructively and listen to different perspectives.

Trustee recruitment should be transparent

The third ingredient in a recipe for positive engagement is DSC’s approach to sustaining and regenerating our Board.

So in addition to applications being stripped of identifying characteristics and the separation shortlisting and interview panels, we’ve worked hard to make trustee recruitment transparent and to remove obstacles to attracting applicants from the widest talent pool.

Consequently, our process doesn’t require extraneous biographical details, positively encourages applications from those who may not have traditionally considered themselves as charity trustees, supported by a self-assessment skills matrix which is prefaced by a statement that candidates aren’t expected to possess all or any given number of the listed skills, while completion helps us to understand what training and/or support may be required.

These practices have resulted in a Board with an age range of 21 to 75, representative of the diversity of UK society and of the charities we serve.

When did you last look at whether your board reflects the organisation, communities and future you are trying to serve?

Change your idea of growth

Based on long experience, the final ingredient I’d like to share is my firm belief that trustees must avoid the false premise that ‘growth’ is solely concerned with getting bigger and therefore increasing organisational turnover.

For DSC, true and sustainable growth is about the scope of our influence, the increase in our reach, and the value we can add to the impact our beneficiaries make to theirs.

And perhaps that is the bigger question for any board: what does success actually look like for your charity?

Is it growth in income? Growth in services? Growth in reach? Or something less easily measured, such as the difference your organisation is able to make?

Continue the conversation at the DSC Charity Leadership and Governance Summit

There is no single recipe for a positive and engaged trustee board.

The right approach will depend on your charity, its people, its purpose and the challenges it faces. But there is always value in stepping back and asking whether the way your board operates is helping your organisation to achieve its purpose.

These are the kinds of questions we’ll be exploring at the DSC Charity Leadership and Governance Summit, taking place online on Wednesday 7 and Thursday 8 October 2026.

The Summit will bring together charity leaders, trustees and governance professionals for two days of discussion, learning and reflection on the issues that matter to the effective leadership and governance of charities.

If you’re a trustee, Chair, CEO or charity leader, come and join the conversation – Find out more and book your tickets here.

And in the meantime, DSC has a whole array of resources, courses and books on good governance. Take a look here.