Trustees' Week 2025: looking at the value of trusteeship

Posted: 07/11/2025

It is often said that 'charity begins at home', and for many, what a charity does is thoroughly entwined with this idea of 'home'. From social housing charities providing safe places to live, to carers enabling independent living, and community transport services connecting people to essential appointments, charities play a vital role in everyday life. Across villages and towns, many small parish charities run village foodbanks, community cafés, sports clubs, societies and toddler groups. It is no exaggeration to say that charity is woven into the very fabric of our communities.

Without the volunteers and trustees who set up, manage and run these services, our world would look very different. Charity trustees and volunteers are the backbone of an entire section of our society, giving freely of their time, expertise, enthusiasm and commitment for the benefit of others.

For charity trustees in particular, they not only make things happen for those around them, but ensure that they are done to the highest possible standards and within a firm regulatory framework. Often dismissed as 'red tape' or 'bureaucracy', the administration of running a charity is fundamental to their continued existence and legitimacy. It is only by upholding the trust that members of the public have in the charity sector that those charities can continue to carry out their crucial role in our society.

Founders are often the first trustees of a charity, and it is their vision, determination and drive to make a change in the world that lights the initial flame of a charity. That torch is then carried forward by trustees who work alongside the founders, and others who take it on in the future. Once a charity is established, the trustees become custodians of charitable funds for a specific aim or purpose. They must guard those funds and other assets and do their utmost to achieve the aims of the organisation.

Some charities are established with a finite goal – one that, if achieved, would ultimately bring the work of the charity to a close. Trussell (formerly the Trussell Trust) is a prominent example of this: when it meets its goal of eradicating food poverty, the organisation will no longer be needed. Other charities have what they expect to be a perpetual purpose, such as educating young people, helping those who are sick, or providing places of worship; and there are also many in between these two positions.

All charities have people at their core: a heritage charity cannot safeguard historic sites without skilled craftspeople, dedicated volunteers, and staff who ensure public access where possible. Animal welfare charities, likewise, cannot manage without, for example, vets, animal husbandry experts, nurses, volunteers, site staff and many others. Without their people, charities cannot exist; and it is trustees who hold responsibility for these people.

Trustees are custodians; they will be acutely aware of the history of the charity, how it came into being, how it has been working to achieve its aims, and of past successes and failures. In the here and now, trustees must manage the resources they have, again to achieve their charitable aims, but also with an eye to the future. They must carry out their role sustainably, keeping (or putting) the charity in a position to continue its important work long into the future, even where that future may be one in which the charity is no longer needed.

The Charity Commission estimates that there are almost 1 million trustees of registered charities in the UK. There will also be trustees of unregistered charities, 'Community Amateur Sports Clubs' (CASC), not-for-profit associations, and other groups working to advance charitable aims. Being unpaid as a charity trustee does not mean that the work has no value. Perhaps the truth is actually to the contrary: that the work of a charity trustee is so valuable as to be priceless.

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