Resources / Governance vs management: what is the board's job, and what isn't?
Governance vs management: what is the board's job, and what isn't?
Governance is deciding what the charity is for and whether it is getting there. Management is running it day to day. The board governs: it sets the ends, guards the money and the mission, and holds whoever delivers to account. Management decides the means. John Carver's Policy Governance model puts it in one line: "Governance is about identifying the 'ends' and management is about deciding the 'means' of achieving the 'ends' as defined by the board."
What belongs to governance?
- Purpose and strategy: what we exist to do, and the few priorities that will move it
- Oversight and accountability: are we legal, are we solvent, is it working
- Appointing, supporting and challenging the people who deliver
- The decisions the governing document reserves to the board
- Protecting the charity's money, reputation and beneficiaries
What belongs to management?
- Day-to-day operations, planning and delivery
- Leading staff and volunteers, and the detail of how work gets done
- Spending within the budget and policies the board set
- Bringing the board honest information and options
Why does the line matter?
A board buried in operations has no time left for the questions only it can ask, and a board that drifts too far from delivery cannot judge whether anything is working. The regulator's published inquiries show both failures: boards that rubber-stamped a dominant individual, and boards so absent nobody could account for the money. The useful test for any agenda item: are we deciding an end, or doing a means?
What if our trustees also do the work?
In most small charities, trustees are also the volunteers who run the sessions and keep the books. That is normal and lawful. The discipline is to know which hat you are wearing: when the board meets, it governs, even if the same people go back to delivering on Monday. Put the governing questions (purpose, money, risk, performance) on the agenda first, minute the decisions, and let the doing be organised outside the meeting.
Quick test: governance or management?
- Agreeing the annual budget: governance. Choosing the venue for the summer fair: management.
- Setting the reserves policy: governance. Paying this month's invoices: management.
- Deciding to employ a first member of staff: governance. Writing the rota: management.
- Reviewing whether activities still further the objects: governance, every year.