Deadline: 6-Feb-24
Nominations are now open for the Charity Governance Awards, an exciting not-for-profit initiative created to celebrate outstanding governance and trusteeship in charities across the UK, allowing large and small not-for-profit organisations to inspire and learn from one another.
The mission is to celebrate and reward exceptional charity governance, while sharing exemplary work that inspires and informs boards and trustees across the country.
For its ninth year, the awards have six categories intended to showcase the work trustees do to help charities respond to emerging challenges and fulfil their missions – including a new category focused on celebrating ‘People in Governance’, and the practices and policies responsible for creating a culture of excellence across a charity and its stakeholders.
Categories
- Board Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
- Bringing together diverse talents to achieve your aims
- This award is for organisations that can demonstrate diversity within their board membership, and a commitment to being inclusive. They are looking for diversity in its broadest sense: diversity of approach, based on differing life experience, culture, ethnicity, disability, professional or sector background, age or other factors.
- They are looking for charities where this diversity complements the specific nature of the charity and its work –for example, the range of beneficiaries and the organisation’s scope, strategy and values.
- Bringing together diverse talents to achieve your aims
- Transforming With Digital
- Harnessing digital and technology for long-term change
- They want this category to showcase the phenomenal efforts of the sector and to shine both hope and inspiration on what might be achieved using digital and technology – they are particularly interested to hear about how digital has created long-term change for your organisation and how your governance empowered that to happen.
- This category recognizes a board that has championed digital to help the charity unlock its impact in a powerful way for its users and for society. They are looking for a charity and its board which has galvanised the power of tech not only to innovate or improve its activities, but to transform its offer, its impact and its purpose in becoming a truly ‘digital first’ organisation over the long term.
- Harnessing digital and technology for long-term change
- From Systemic Challenge to Meaningful Change
- Finding opportunities for innovation and change whilst tackling communal crises or systemic challenges
- This award is for boards which show bold and generous leadership in the face of adversity or widespread challenges. They want to hear from trustee boards that are looking at the bigger picture and providing strategic leadership to their charities, navigating systemic issues, crises or emergencies, and making a sustainable impact.
- Finding opportunities for innovation and change whilst tackling communal crises or systemic challenges
- People in Governance
- Focused on how boards bring people together to help the charity succeed
- This award is for charities that can demonstrate how all aspects of the Board’s work have supported outstanding results in delivering the charity’s mission and objectives. They are looking for evidence of:
- effective decision making,
- engagement of all trustees on the Board, and
- strong accountability and mutual challenge between the Board and the Executive.
- This award is for charities that can demonstrate how all aspects of the Board’s work have supported outstanding results in delivering the charity’s mission and objectives. They are looking for evidence of:
- Focused on how boards bring people together to help the charity succeed
- Improving Impact in Small Charities Category
- Small charities, big impact.
- Improving Impact is split into two different categories based on the size of the organisation: (a) a category for charities with 0-3 paid staff and (b) a category for charities with 4-30 paid staff.
- Small charities are at the heart of communities, tackling inequalities daily and punching above their weight when it comes to impact.
- This award is for organisations that can demonstrate how the Board has contributed towards the increase of the charity’s impact in relation to its cause, mission and values. They are looking for examples of increasing social impact, not fundraising or increasing income.
- Small charities, big impact.
Why You Should Enter the Charity Governance Awards?
- The Charity Governance Awards are open to any charity registered in the UK; entries are free and easy to submit online, and accepted between November and February this year. The shortlist will be announced in April, and in May shortlisted charities will be invited to a complimentary awards ceremony in central London, where the winners will be revealed.
- Cash Prizes and Other Rewards
- The winner of each category will receive a £5,000 prize (as an unrestricted grant).
- Runners-up will receive prizes of £1,000 as well, and each shortlisted charity will be offered a paid one-year membership to the Association of Chairs for its chair or vice-chair as well as a complimentary place on a Cause4 Trustee Leadership Programme for a new or inexperienced Trustee.
Eligibility Criteria
- Charities must:
- be registered in the UK by the Charity Commission (or the equivalent in each devolved nation)
- have been established before 31 December 2020
- enter no more than two categories
- only submit one entry per category (you may not have entries submitted by multiple stakeholders in the same category).
- Entries must:
- cover activities undertaken in the last five years (2018-2023)
- focus on the work of the main board, not sub-committees
- be submitted by a trustee, employee or volunteer of the charity
- be signed off by the charity’s CEO or chair of the board
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