CHARITY GOVERNANCE AWARDS 2020

We held our fifth annual Charity Governance Awards ceremony virtually in May 2020. We organise the annual event with partners NPC, Prospectus and Reach Volunteering, and our collective opinion was that good charity governance was more important now, in a time of crisis, than ever before. Our Clothworker Judges finished the first review of entries early in the year, and our team of Professional Judges persevered through the early days of the COVID-19 lock down to complete the second review and select the 2020 shortlist. This year, the Awards received more than 120 amazing entries, and the 21 shortlisted charities raised the bar on what good charity governance in the UK should look like.

Although we couldn’t be together at Clothworkers’ Hall to raise a glass, we were still able to applaud the inspiring work of our shortlisted charities via a virtual ceremony on social media – mainly on Twitter, but also Facebook and LinkedIn. Clothworker Michael Jarvis (Past Master, 2016-17) opened the ceremony with a welcome video, and our ‘keynote speaker’, Becca Bunce, provided us with an amazing and insightful article about trusteeship. We were able to confidentially contact representatives of the winning charities before the big reveal to record candid reactions to the good news, and to share them as part of the virtual ceremony. The winners of the Charity Governance Awards 2020 were:

Board Diversity and Inclusivity: Public Interest Research Centre

Embracing Digital: upReach

Embracing Opportunity and Harnessing Risk: Muslim Women’s Network UK

Improving Impact (0-3 staff): Older Citizen’s Advocacy York

Improving Impact (4-25 staff): Sport 4 Life UK

Improving Impact (26+ staff): St Mary’s Hospice

Managing Turnaround: Smallwood Trust A round-up of the virtual event is posted to the Charity Governance Awards website, including a link to ‘Becca Bunce on Governance, Small Actions and Big Impact’ – an insightful article on changing the way we think, personally and as trustees or charity professionals. The article continues to resonate for trustees and their charities months after Becca first penned it. Visit charitygovernanceawards.co.uk.

Alternatively, you can visit the Twitter account, @CharityGovAward, or search for #CharityGov20 across Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

We’re grateful to the nearly 60 Clothworkers who helped us in the first round of judging, allowing us to create a ‘long list’ of entries for our second round review by Professional Judges.

If you’re interested in serving as a Clothworker Judge for 2021, please register via the link from the October e-Clothworker, or contact the Membership and Communications Manager, Renée LaDue, by email at reneeladue@clothworkers.co.uk.

Above: Becca Bunce is a passionate advocate of ensuring typically unheard voices are listened and responded to in decision-making. Her work focuses on enabling people with lived-experience to participate in and lead social change. She is a trustee at John Ellerman Foundation, and PhD student at King’s College London and UAL. Becca was on the Governance Code advisory group and co-directed the award-winning, law-creating IC Change campaign. President Obama called her an inspiration for her work on violence against women and disabled people’s rights and the University of London named her as one of its 150 leading women. Below is an extract from her ‘Keynote’ article.

An extract from ‘Governance, Small Actions and Big Impact’ by Becca Bunce:

‘Coronavirus disproportionately impacts black people and people of colour, disabled people, and people from low income backgrounds. The challenges that are now amplified by coronavirus aren’t new. BAME organisations have been underfunded for years – and now we could lose 9 out of 10 BAME organisations in the next three months. Disabled people’s organisations, migrant and refugee charities and domestic violence organisations all warned us of the increased demand for their services and decreased funding during austerity, and are now facing terrible pressures.

‘We have to acknowledge that the systems that work in our own favour may be causing harm to others ...

‘How many boards have previously turned down disabled people who needed remote access to join? Some of these could benefit right now from their skills and insights into how to run effective online meetings. How many boards have recruited from the same circles, ignoring board diversity and inclusivity, and now lack the necessary knowledge and skills about how COVID-19 is impacting different communities? It is by doing the same things over and over that we do harm ... ‘The last few months have demonstrated how our everyday lives can be redesigned by us taking small, vital actions. At this moment, charity boards are facing a lot of tough, big decisions. It would be easy to say “We don’t have the time…,” to put our heads down, to ignore that the world as we know it has changed, to ignore the harm we are doing.

‘Or we can accept that the normal was never normal ... We can resist the urge to do what we have always done. Many of the shortlisted charities ... demonstrate how small actions have resulted in big impact. We know how to take action, we just need to choose what we will act on ... ’