Need support with your charity governance?

We support charity boards to develop their approach to governance, ensuring that there is a clear line of delegation from the board to the CEO. 

Charity boards need to fulfil their legal duties and govern their charities with transparency and due diligence

However, charity trustees are usually volunteers, often with day jobs or other commitments. They carry a great legal responsibility but often lack the support and training they need to bring their full potential to the role. Charities with limited budgets might find trustee training is not their priority. 

Charities with good governance make better decisions

They have a better oversight of risk and finance, and so are better able to support their beneficiaries both now and into the future. We specialise in working with trustees of newly established, small, and medium-sized charities who want to grow their board or develop their skills and knowledge around charity governance but need a helping hand or a bit of support.  

We can help you make your trustee board more effective

We can support your charity trustees to make sound, informed decisions, and support the senior team to implement them. Whether you need a full governance review, a board skills audit, policy writing, governance effectiveness advice, or trustee training, we can offer a tailored service to your charity.

Charity and Company Secretary

Supporting your trustees in their decision making. Ensuring you comply with charity and company law.

Do you need a hand with ensuring that your charity meets all its legal obligations in charity and company law? The list of jobs can feel very long at times: maintaining statutory records, filing annual returns, submitting financial statements, maintaining a list of assets and liabilities, filing your annual reports, ensuring your confirmation statements are submitted, arranging meetings, preparing agendas, circulating papers, taking minutes, recording decisions… the list goes on! We can help take these tasks off your to-do list.

Board skills audit

Identifying knowledge and skills gaps. Planning for improved governance.

Developing a strong, knowledgeable, and skilled board is key to a successful charity. They support the CEO, set the strategic vision, and have responsibility for governance, all of which bring a significant responsibility.

We can support you to make sure you have the right people with the right skills on your board, and help you understand where there are gaps that need to be filled.

Trustee recruitment and training

Improving trustee governance skills. Building resilient charity boards.

Being a trustee is a challenge but highly rewarding role. Many are volunteers, lending their time and expertise to support charities they believe in. In order to get the best out of your trustees, you need to help them develop their skills in the same way as you would a member of staff. Trustees have a significant role and carry a lot of responsibility.

We can help you ensure they have the skills and knowledge the need to do the best possible job.

Policy writing and reviews

Ensuring you take a consistent and compliant approach. Helping you meet your legal duties.

Maintaining your organisational policies can feel like a never-ending task. Staying up to date with legislative or regulatory changes and getting board approval for policies can be time consuming, especially when they relate to areas outside of your own expertise.

We can help you by writing and reviewing your policies and making sure that they’re reviewed and approved by the board on time.

Risk management

Helping you identify areas of vulnerability. Supporting you to manage and mitigate risk.

While it is ultimately the responsibility of your trustees, risk management should ideally involve everybody – especially managers, but also staff, users, volunteers, if you want to get a clear view of the risks your organisation faces.

We can help you by facilitating a workshop around risk to help you see the whole picture, by supporting you to develop and maintain a risk register, and helping you to manage and mitigate risk.

Testimonials

Trustee and Management Team

As a new charity, Emma has been brilliant in supporting us through the process of preparing our financial information to enable us to submit to the Charities Commission. Emma has taken the time to establish a valued interest and working knowledge about the charitable work we are aiming to deliver for a vulnerable group of young adults with special needs.

LifeBridge Asend

Helen Ashley Taylor

Emma is a proficient, efficient and resourceful finance professional with leadership and board level experience gained in the commercial and not-for-profit sectors. The finance dashboards and commentaries Emma produces help board members make informed decisions demonstrate technical and specialist knowledge whilst also being easy to understand for any trustee/board member who isn’t experienced in finance.

Principal Consultant, Charity HAT

Trustee

In 20 years operating at the most senior levels of the public and private sectors, I have never seen a more effective (or enjoyable!) session run to identify and prioritise risks than Emma did for my fellow trustees and I; she helped us to identify and focus on the key risks and as a consequence moved us on as a Board so much and so positively.

Co-operative Heritage Trust

Fran Ferris-Ockwell

We were lucky enough to become clients of Beyond Profit at just the right time. Emma helped us navigate a period of change and uncertainty, and she has made significant improvements to both our finance and governance processes. She is highly knowledgeable and has a positive and solution-focused approach which is exactly what we need as a small charity with limited resources. She goes above and beyond for us, always ensuring that our financial position is clear and that we fully understand our statutory and governance obligations. Emma has a very polite and personable approach and can explain complex and technical information in a straightforward manner. I cannot recommend her highly enough.

CEO, Nomad Opening Doors

Kirsten Mitchell

You have really helped me add some real structure to Spoons

Founder and Chair at Spoons

Geraud de Ville de Goyet

I have worked with Emma on setting up the accounts of our growing organisation and I have to say she has been fantastic.

Her wealth of experience, attention to detail, and flexibility to work around our deadlines has been absolutely great for us and I would highly recommend her services to any non profit organisation needing help.

Chief Executive at Barking & Dagenham Giving

Diane Vernon

Emma worked with EmployabilityUK to prepare the latest accounting records and reports. An excellent service delivered quickly and thoroughly.

Emma’s expertise has helped the charity to better prepare for funding applications and her can-do approach makes her a highly valued supplier.

CEO & Founder Director, EmployabilityUK

Sophie Easteal

Emma provided expertise on verifying our QuickBooks set up, providing advice on our Chart of Accounts and correcting some coding errors/journals. She also created our first R&P report producing a template we can use in future years.
She took time to understand our charity's financial history and objectives of this project. She was very approachable and we could arrange short zoom meetings very promptly. I've not got a finance background and she gave me confidence to ask any question and relayed details to me in a straightforward way without finance jargon. She also used a secure document sharing portal that made it really seamless for us to give her the background information she needed.
I really enjoyed working with her and would highly recommend.
Our charity's finances are now better categorised giving trustees more control and transparency, especially regarding Restricted Funds.

Trustee, The Green Backyard

Paul Sommerfeld

Emma was Deputy Principal and Finance director throughout the 5 years (2009-15) that I was Chair of Governors at the Co-operative College.

She is quite exceptional as a finance leader, being among those rare people who are not only very competent at the technical tasks of finance policy and management but who also never lose sight of the purposes of the organisation. She seeks to ensure that finance policy promotes achievement of the purposes of the organisation; and in doing so she is creative in finding ways to maximise the assets available. For example, in creating a new vehicle to incorporate a range of old bequests whose purposes had been overtaken by history (Dealing with the Charity Commission on such things is no small task); and in seeking considerably better-than-average investment possibilities within the co-operative movement for our reserves.

She is also a lively and energetic colleague whom it is a pleasure to work with.

Former Chair of the Co-operative College

Trustee

Clearest set of accounts I have seen in my time at the Guild and just what I have always been looking to achieve. We can look forward to well informed decisions from the Board. Thank you.

Bolton Guild of Help

Recent Blog Posts

View Blog