You are in the ‘Be a Trustee’ section of the SCVO website, where you can find out everything you need to know about being a trustee of a charity / voluntary organisation.

The 'Be A Trustee' website was made possible thanks to the kind generosity of MacRoberts Solicitors.

MacRoberts specialises in corporate and commercial law but the firms highly qualified lawyers offer advice on a wide range of legal areas, including charity law. The firm works with an extensive range of charities and prides itself on being highly-attuned to its clients’ varied needs. For more information about MacRoberts
visit their website.

This page covers the Roles and Responsibilities of being a trustee and answers the questions: 'What is a trustee?' and 'What does a trustee do?'

What is a trustee?
Very simply put a ‘trustee’ is the popular name given to those people who make up the management committee of a voluntary organisation. More often than not that voluntary organisation will have charitable status (i.e. it’s a charity)and so the trustees would be known officially as 'charity trustees'. The position of trustees in relation to their voluntary organisation can be compared to the board of directors of a company – and in fact many voluntary organisations are companies with charitable status, so the trustees are directors as well as being trustees!

What does a trustee do?
Trustees don’t usually get paid so being a trustee is a form of volunteering. If there are no members of staff or other volunteers, the trustees basically run the organisation themselves. They have to do everything and anything. If there are staff or volunteers the trustees will usually stop delivering the frontline day-to-day services and take on more of a strategic leadership role, thinking about and planning where the organisation is going, how its going to progress and improve, whether it needs to change, what it needs to keep it going and so on. Either way the trustees have a role in what’s called the governance of the organisation.

The most important thing about trustees is that, without them, voluntary organisations large and small, could not continue their good work and new voluntary organisations would not be formed. It might be very important to fly to Africa with an international aid agency to help deal with humanitarian crises but if the aid agency didn’t have any trustees, nobody would be flying anywhere.

Most voluntary organisations start small and stay that way. It usually suits their mission best. But even the biggest of today’s charities were first set up by a small management committee of keen volunteers. Then they raised some money, then they employed some staff and eventually they grew bigger which is why today we have charities the size of, for example, Oxfam, the National Trust for Scotland, the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and so on. And all because of a few committed people who wanted to make a difference.

SCVO has a comprehensive range of in-depth information about the role of trustees of voluntary organisations and a comprehensive suite of support materials for trustees. They are accessible through our Governance website which you can access from here but you might want to start with these links:

Your Mission Governance: an introductory leaflet to governance issues (MS Word version)

SCVO's 'Trustees and Committees' Information Pages

Read enough? Want to 'Be A Trustee'.  See the Be A Trustee page

Still wondering“Is being a trustee for me?”  If so; why not try our interactive quiz and find out!

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