Having The Range Of Skills To Best Serve The Organisation

All organisations are likely to need management committee members with knowledge & experience of:-

• The organisation’s core business
• Organisational management
• Financial management
• Charity governance.

A Management Committee needs to have knowledge including information/feedback about their beneficiaries whether these are a local community or clients & service users.

Management Committees needs to put in place systems for communicating with users. For community groups this might involve local meetings or door to door work. For organisations who deliver services it might be through telephone interviews with clients & users or through feedback interviews or questionnaires.

Some suggested solutions/tools/approaches:

• Undertake a Skills/diversity audit of the management commitment to identify areas gaps in management committee expertise.
• Review the recruitment strategy. If relevant expertise isn’t available from your organisations’ membership, consider approaching other organisations in the same area of work. Don’t forget that service users may have a valuable experience of and commitment to, your organisation.
• Organise a training and development programme for Management Committee members.
• Seek co-options from members of the organisation with these skills.
• Identify and recruit advisers or advisory groups to enable participation from people with relevant skills and knowledge.
• Access external expertise in the form of information, advice, facilitation or training.
• Organise a development session for the management committee after the annual general meeting to introduce members to the purpose, strategy and history of the organisation.